Enhancing Public Availability of Customs Information
In the Islamic Countries
84
Figure 41 presents results from the TFIs, focusing on the first four pillars that touch on
information availability and related mechanisms. In all cases except advance ruling, Bangladesh
can be regarded as having partially implemented best practice. The result on advance ruling
likely reflects the fact that the TFI data are not current as of late 2018: see further below for a
description of Bangladesh’s new advance ruling system. However, despite good performance
with a country at its per capita income level, Bangladesh remains well within the global frontier
defined by Singapore, so there is clear scope to improve performance, with consequent
economic benefits for firms and consumers.
Figure 41: Performance on information availability in the TFIs, Bangladesh and Singapore,
2017.
Source: OECD TFIs.
A comparison of Bangladesh’s scores on these metrics for 2012 and 2017 shows that in terms of
involvement of the trade community, Bangladesh’s score increased by 25%, while for appeal
procedures it increased by 52%. These findings are in line with the evidence presented below
in terms of the development of new systems and procedures in Bangladesh in the last few years.
However, the country’s score on information availability fell by 20%. The reasons for this are
unclear, but it is possible that the 2017 data do not take full account of the recent initiatives
described here, which put a substantial amount of information into the public domain.
The discussion in Sections 2 and 3, and so far in this Section, has concentrated on aggregate
pillars identified in the OECD data. However, the online policy simulator makes it possible to
download data at a finer level of disaggregation, namely individual questions. Table 11 (Annex
5) presents results, where 2 means full implementation, 1 means partial implementation, and 0
means no implementation. The table shows that a number of important elements of the
information availability agenda have been fully implemented, whereas progress is still required
in some areas, such as the timeliness of enquiry points and their operating hours, or publication
of international agreements. It is important to stress that some answers are likely out of date,
given that this area is one of active work for the government. The remainder of this Section sets
0,000
0,500
1,000
1,500
2,000
Information Availabiity
Involvement of Trade
Communituy
Advance Ruling
Appeal Procedures
Bangladesh Singapore