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Enhancing Public Availability of Customs Information

In the Islamic Countries

63

Article 2.1 (information and opportunity to comment before entry into force), Article 2.2

(consultations), and Article 4 (appeal or review procedures) are listed in Category A. This

pattern of notifications is suggestive of some limits in Senegal’s current practice as against the

benchmark set by the TFA. To provide further detail,

Table 2 s

ets out a detailed analysis of

Senegal’s scheduling of commitments under the TFA, focusing on the first four articles. As of

November 2018, Senegal has only notified its Category A commitments, so the table necessarily

cannot speculate as to the nature or extent of Category B and C obligations. Where no Category

A notification has been made, the entry is left blank.

Table 2: Detailed breakdown of TFA implementation by Senegal.

Provision

Heading/Description

Category and Indicative date for

implementation (as per Member’s

notification)

Article 1.1

Publication

Article 1.2

Information available through

Internet

Article 2.1

Opportunity to Comment and

Information before Entry into

Force

A

Article 2.2

Consultations

A

Article 3

Advance Rulings

Article 4

Appeal of Review Procedures

A

Source: Author based on information from WTO.

To provide context for the detailed discussion to follow, we use international data to provide a

“big picture” comparison between Senegal’s performance and what could be considered

international best practice. To proxy the latter, we use Singapore—an acknowledged global

leader in trade facilitation. Concretely, we analyze Senegal’s performance relative to Singapore

on key dimensions of the TFIs related to information availability. It is impossible to undertake

such a comparison using the UNGS, as data are not available for Senegal in the current version

of the database.

The view of incomplete progress that emerges from Senegal’s notification pattern is reinforced

by a comparison of the countries scores on the TFIs against a proxy for global best practice,

namely Singapore (Figure 35). Senegal’s score is substantially less than Singapore’s on each of

the four information availability pillars of the TFIs. It is closest in terms of involvement of the

trade community, and most distant in relation to information availability. In terms of dynamic

performance, a comparison of the TFIs as issued in 2015 versus the 2017 update shows that

there has been very little movement in terms of information availability, trade community

involvement, or advance rulings; the indicators suggest there has been some backsliding in

terms of appeal procedures.