Reviewing Agricultural Trade Policies
To Promote Intra-OIC Agricultural Trade
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 European Commission Market Access Database Trade Barrier: It is not developed for
downloading data.
 WTO I-TIP: It has missing OIC countries (i.e. Azerbaijan, Comoros, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon,
Libya, Palestine, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan). It takes time to
download and aggregate the data. Crossed queries for specific product, country, and
non-tariff measures are possible.
WTO I-TIP database is employed as a source of NTMs. Even though there are some drawbacks,
it allows the aggregation process.
1.2. Methodology
In this study, most of the quantitative analyses are based on descriptive statistics with a
benchmarking approach. In brief, there are complementary approaches employed in (i) analysis
of agricultural trade flows and (ii) review of agricultural trade policies. Below, approaches and
methodologies employed in respective analyses are explained.
1.2.1. Analysis of Agricultural Trade Flows
In the case of descriptive studies, major trade blocs are used as the main reference point in
benchmarking. These major trade blocs are chosen as EU-28, ASEAN, NAFTA, MERCOSUR, and
OIC considering the differences in their regional integration levels, their geographic positions in
the world, and their shares in the total agricultural trade flows. Moreover, three subsets of OIC
countries (Africa, Asia and Arab countries) are used as the reference country groups which are
shared in Annex A.
In the case of products, agricultural products covering agri-food products, agricultural raw
materials, and fish products as grouped in Annex B is employed as the unit of analyses. Taking
into consideration the country and product groups, top to down approach is employed as each
chapter firstly focuses on general trends, and continues with detailed analyses. As trend
analyses are conducted for the time period from 2008 to 2016, standing out products and
countries are identified considering the last 3 years (2014-2015-2016) average. Moreover, in
order to identify standing out countries and products, top 5 products/countries are shortlisted
considering their share from the respective total for the disaggregated level of analyses. In order
to understand the overall trends, both export and import trends are evaluated.
In order to identify unexploited potentials trade matches, a simple graphical layout (quadrant
scatter graph) is implemented to highlight the key products that can be targeted in promoting
intra-OIC agricultural trade. The central idea of the scatter graph layout is to identify products
simultaneously through information gathered from x-axis and y-axis. In this specific layout,
“percentage of coverage of the region's imports” is taken as x-axis while it provides information
on the current level of intraregional trade. Secondly, “growth rate of the region’s import” is taken
as y-axis while it proxies the future demand. Technically, the growth rate is measured by
Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) formula for the time period from 2008 to 2016. In the
case of x-axis and y-axis, last 3 year averages are taken for the time period from 2014 to 2016.
Moreover, the bubble sizes of each product represent the total average global trade volume
between 2014 and 2016.
Through the quadrant analysis, products with low levels of regional integration and higher
growth rates are highlighted in the upper left-hand side. Furthermore, considering their bubble
size - volume of global demand-, top 3 products are selected. Country pairs most likely to be
successful to promote intra-regional trade are identified through Sankey diagrams in which