Enhancing Public Availability of Customs Information
In the Islamic Countries
40
Current State of Play
Figure 20 shows data from the UNGS for the three OIC regional groups, taking averages, and for
Singapore as a best practice comparator. The first point of note is that on the existence of an
NTFC, the Arab and Asian groups outperform Singapore, and the African Group has the same
level of performance. This is an important indication of convergence with best practice that was
not visible from the TFI data discussed above. On the other elements of the dataset, however,
Singapore’s best practice frontier is well ahead of anything observed with the OIC groups, on an
average basis. In general, the Arab and Asian Groups have the strongest level of performance
relative to Singapore, followed by the African Group. However, the relative pattern of group
performance varies across indicators. Similarly, the differences among groups are quite distinct
depending on the indicator considered: for publication of regulations, for example, average
performance in Africa is much weaker than what is observed in the other groups, whereas for
stakeholder consultations, the three groups are much closer in terms of average scores, and the
African Group in fact outperforms the Arab Group. However, these averages hide considerable
variation at the level of individual countries, so it is necessary to look within each group to have
a full perception of the performance of OIC member countries.
Figure 20: UNGS data for OIC regional groups and Singapore as a comparator, 2017.
Source: UNGS.
Attention turns first to the African Group (Figure 21). In this case, missing bars indicate a score
of zero (not implemented). However, the general picture that emerges is that most OIC African
countries havemade considerable progress on implementing the core aspects of the information
availability components of the UNGS. Implementation is complete for three indicators in Sierra
Leone, one indicator in Mali, one in Cameroon, one in Burkina Faso, and three in Benin. Most
other indicators show that implementation is partial. Although there are some countries, such
as Guinea and Gabon, that are still in the early stages of implementation of these disciplines, the
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National Trade
Facilitation
Committee
Publication of
Regulations
Stakeholder
Consultations
Advance Publication
Advance Ruling African
Arab
Asian
Singapore