Enhancing Public Availability of Customs Information
In the Islamic Countries
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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, 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.