Enhancing Public Availability of Customs Information
In the Islamic Countries
25
as seeing strong, positive changes in South Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa, as do information
availability and advance rulings in East Asia and the Pacific. Rates of improvement are lower in
other areas and regions, but still generally positive and quite significant. There are, however,
negative scores in some cases. While these scores could indicate backsliding, they may also be
an artefact of composition effects. With the entry into force of the TFA, and the ambitious
approach many developing countries have taken to scheduling commitments, there is every
reason to believe that further backsliding will not be seen in the future.
Figure 5: Percent change in average TFI score, by developing region, 2012-2017.
Source: OECD TFIs. Note: excludes high income countries.
2.3. UN Global Survey
This subsection moves from a consideration of the TFIs to the UNGS. The UNGS makes more
detailed data available to researchers, of which five data points are of particular relevance here:
 Existence of a NTFC.
 Publication of regulations.
 Stakeholder consultations.
 Advance publication.
 Advance rulings.
Again, these questions are broadly reflective of the contents of the first four articles of the TFA.
As in the previous subsection, the discussion proceeds by first looking at the state of play as per
the most recent available data. It then moves to look at recent trends, to identify the direction
and extent of movement over time in this policy area.
Current State of Play
The second major dataset analyzed here is the UNGS. To address the current state of play in the
areas of interest, attention is drawn to the most recent version of the data, which is for 2017.
Interest is primarily in the first five indicators, as noted above hows that per capita is
again an important determinant of performance, as expected, and in line with results for the
TFIs. Similarly, Singapore stands out: the income group averages are, in most cases, well within
the best practice frontier established by Singapore.
-20
-10
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
East Asia &
Pacific
Europe &
Central Asia
Latin America
& Caribbean
Middle East &
North Africa
South Asia Sub-Saharan
Africa
Percent
Region
Information Availability Involvement of the Trade Community Advance Rulings Appeal Procedures