Enhancing Public Availability of Customs Information

In the Islamic Countries

However, there is more complexity in these data than in the more monotonic TFIs. For instance,

there is strong convergence across income groups in terms of the existence of a National Trade

Facilitation Committee, as well as in the area of stakeholder consultations. Best practice has

clearly been spreading across income groups in these two cases. However, practice on

publication and particularly advance rulings differs markedly across income groups, with these

procedures much less likely to be in place in lower income countries. Where there is a

performance gap between lower and higher income countries in relation to public information

availability, these data suggest that it is concentrated in particular areas, rather than being a

generalized phenomenon. This point comes out more strongly with these data than with the

TFIs. A reason is perhaps that they are more disaggregated, focusing on specific measures,

whereas the TFIs are only available in numerical form as pillars, not individual indicators.

Figure 6: UNGS data related to information availability, by income group with Singapore for

reference, 2017.

Source: UNGS.

The next figure breaks the data out by developing region. Singapore stands out as having best

practice, the maximum possible score of 3, in all areas except the existence of an NTFC. On the

other measures, interpretation is more challenging. There is no clear narrative to the effect that

one region is leading in this general area, based on a review of all measures: it tends to be the

case that a region can perform well on one metric, but poorly on another, for example. The only

standout is that Sub-Saharan Africa is generally a weaker performer than other regions,

although the relative size of the difference depends on the measure under consideration.

Although regional scores are reasonably consistent across measures, there are some important

discrepancies, such as South Asia performing quite well onmost measures, but poorly in relation

to advance rulings. Again, the more disaggregated nature of the data makes it possible to identify

more interesting dynamics compared with the four pillars of the TFIs investigated above.

National Trade

Facilitation

Committee

Publication of

Regulations

Stakeholder

Consultations

Advance

Publication

Advance

Ruling

High income

Upper middle income

Lower middle income

Low income

Singapore