Enhancing Public Availability of Customs Information

In the Islamic Countries

GLOBAL TRENDS AND GOOD PRACTICES FROM NON-OIC

DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

This section provides background for the main substance of the report by highlighting global

trends and good practices from non-OIC developing countries. The term “developing countries”

is interpreted broadly, namely those countries in the low and middle income groups as defined

by the World Bank in 2018. This definition is admittedly broad, but it appropriate against the

context of the TFA, which is the newest piece of international law in this area, where country

obligations are differentiated according to self-declared developing status, which is even

broader. This broad approach is appropriate to set the scene for an analysis of the OIC countries,

which constitute a diverse group in terms of income levels. In addition, the analysis in this

section uses Singapore as a benchmark of global best practice. That country has consistently

placed at or near the top of global trade facilitation rankings, such as the World Bank’s Logistics

Performance Index. Singapore is “developing” for WTO purposes, even though it does not

typically make use of developing country flexibilities, so this feature increases the relevance of

using it as a benchmark of best practice in this section.

A difficulty in undertaking this analysis is that data on public availability of customs and trade

information are only recently available in a systematic way. It is therefore not possible to

systematically address long term trends. Instead, the section focuses on the presentation of basic

data to give an impression of current performance around the world, then considers differences

between recent data points to give evidence of a trend, albeit a short-term one. It is important

to stress that any trend uncovered in this way is largely prior to the TFA becoming binding, so

there is a good case to expect performance to pick up on a broad based in the coming years.

To facilitate comparisons, and in the interests of providing a global view, the data are presented

in aggregate form focusing on World Bank regions and income groups. Presenting average data

across all countries is no informative, as there is considerable variation in practice. Similarly,

presenting individual country data only would overload the reader and make it impossible to

draw out general tendencies in the underlying information. The best compromise is therefore

to use widely known and accepted groups. At this stage, no distinction is made between OIC

member countries and other countries, in the interests of providing a global comparison. Section

3 moves to a detailed consideration of the performance of OIC member countries in particular.

2.1.

Policy Setting: Global Frameworks for Trade Information Availability

Before moving to a consideration of the data, it is important to be clear about what the global

policy regime for public availability of trade and customs information actually requires. The

centerpiece of that regime is now the TFA, but there are also other international instruments

and measures that are of relevance. It is important to discuss the key provisions of these

instruments before moving on to look at ways in which compliance with themhas been assessed

quantitatively.

WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement

As previously noted, the key agreement in this area is now the WTO TFA. Although there is a

Uruguay Round Agreement, now part of the WTO, that touches on customs, it deals with issues

of valuation only, not border procedures or information. Information is dealt with more directly