Enhancing Public Availability of Customs Information
In the Islamic Countries
44
Figure 24 shows the average change by OIC regional group on each of the UNGS indicators of
interest. First, the evidence of partial backsliding that was evident in the TFIs is not at all present
in the UNGS data. All regional groups have either improved or stayed the same, none has scored
lower in 2017 than in 2015. The direction of change is therefore generally as would be expected
in a context of constant performance upgrading. In particular, the African Group stands out as
having the fastest rate of improvement in its UNGS scores over time, albeit starting from a
relatively low baseline compared with the other groups. But these data are suggestive of a
process of convergence within the OIC more generally, where those countries furthest behind
the group best performance threshold are moving towards it at a rapid pace. Although progress
is slower in the Asian and Arab Groups, it is still significant, albeit only in two areas in the Arab
group.
Figure 24: Average percentage changes on UNGS indicators by OIC Regional Group, 2015-
2017.
Source: UNGS.
Of course, regional averages can hide considerable variation across countries. Figure 25 shows
the position for the African Group. Data is not available for both years for many members of the
group, so comparison is impossible; those countries have been dropped from the figure. For
those that remain, the impression from the previous figure is borne out: there is clear
improvement on a variety of metrics in a number of countries. However, progress tends to be
piecemeal, relating to one or two areas out of the five considered, rather than broad-based.
There are also cases of absent bars, which either indicate missing data or zero change. African
OIC countries are therefore clearly moving forward on selected aspects of public information
availability, but experiences differ across countries, and tend to be focused on specific
interventions.
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
140
African Arab Asian
Percent
Group
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