Enhancing Public Availability of Customs Information
In the Islamic Countries
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3. ANALYSIS OF THE OIC MEMBER STATES
Whereas the previous section examined performance on public availability of trade information
on a broad basis, using data for all countries, particularly developing countries, this section
focuses squarely on OIC member countries. The data sources for the performance review are the
same, namely the OECD TFIs and the UNGS. 15 Again, Singapore is chosen as an example of global
best practice and is included as a reference point, so that the distance between OIC countries
and the performance frontier can easily be assessed.
There is no need to restate the policy framework within which this analysis takes place. It was
fully explained at the beginning of Section 2. It is therefore possible to work sequentially through
the two data sources, which are addressed separately.
To provide an overall picture of performance before going into the details of regional groups,
this section first presents figures for the OIC countries compared with the global and developing
country averages.16 Figure 10 presents the TFIs. In the area of information availability, OIC
countries are, on average, higher scoring than the world as a whole and the developing country
group. For involvement of the trade community, the OIC score is higher than that of the
developing country group, but lower than the world average. The same is true for the appeal
procedures pillar. For the advance rulings pillar, however, the OIC score is lower than those of
the other two groups. Figure 11 presents comparable results for the UNGS data. For existence of
a NTFC, the OIC group’s score is higher than both the world average and the developing country
average. For publication of regulations and stakeholder consultations, the OIC group’s score is
between the developing country average and the world average. For the two remaining pillars,
the OIC group’s score is lower than those of the two other groups. Taking these results together
suggests that overall the OIC group tends to perform better than developing countries as a
whole, but that performance is variable across pillars: the area of advance rulings is one that
stands out as somewhat weaker than other areas. However, the OIC is a very heterogeneous
group, so it is important to go into the data in more detail. That is what the remainder of this
section does, using results by regional group.
15 A survey was also conducted of OIC member countries, but too few responses were received to allow for
statistically meaningful analysis in this particular case.
16 “Developing country” does not have a settled international definition. In this report, it refers to countries that
are not members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).