Enhancing Public Availability of Customs Information
In the Islamic Countries
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Key lessons from the UAE experience include:
 High level government impetus can help incentivize administrations to improve trade
facilitation performance, and move forward on public availability of information.
 The objective of becoming a global logistics hub also provides a powerful incentive to
reduce the informational costs associated with international trade transactions.
 Integration of information provisions with a virtual Single Window is an effective way
of reducing trade costs in a broad sense, as it uses ICTs to the maximum possible extent.
 Involvement of the whole trade community, including the public and private sectors, is
necessary to successfully reduce the informational costs associated with trade
transactions.
4.4. Malaysia
Introduction
Malaysia is an upper middle income country according to the World Bank classification. Like
other countries in Southeast Asia, it is highly trade dependent: in 2017, its ratio of trade to GDP
was 136%. Malaysia is heavily invested in the value chainmodel of development, having focused
on industries like electronics where intermediate inputs move across borders multiple times
during production, which means that trade facilitation is a vital determinant of country
competitiveness. In addition, Malaysia’s region is highly competitive in terms of trade facilitation
performance, as it is home to Singapore, a world leader and Malaysia’s immediate neighbor, and
ASEAN has been active in promoting trade facilitation and connectivity.
Information Availability: General State of Play
Malaysia is therefore unsurprisingly a strong performer in trade facilitation, as indicated by
Figure 32 below. Its score is quite close to Singapore’s on advance rulings and appeal
procedures, although there are more notable differences on the other two dimensions, namely
information availability and involvement of the trade community.
Figure 32: TFI scores for Malaysia with Singapore for comparison, 2017.
Source: OECD TFIs.
0,000
0,500
1,000
1,500
2,000
Information
Availability
Involvement of the
Trade Community
Advance Rulings
Appeal Procedures
Malaysia
Singapore