Reviewing Agricultural Trade Policies
To Promote Intra-OIC Agricultural Trade
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flows represent the volume of bilateral trade between countries for these specific 3 products.
Third and the last step of these analyses is reviewing the stance of agricultural trade policy
among these matched countries and strategic products considering applied tariff rates and
preferential trade agreements. Moreover, these analyses are conducted for four subsets of
country groups (region): OIC as a whole, African OIC countries, Asian OIC countries, and Arab
OIC countries.
1.2.2. Review of Agricultural Trade Policies
Throughout the analysis, different classifications of policy measures are used in reviewing
agricultural trade policies. First and foremost, a distinction is made between tariffs and NTMs
and is followed in all chapters of the report. Second, trade agreements are taken into
consideration as an important leg of agricultural trade policy.
For tariffs, the analysis is focused exclusively on ad valorem equivalents of average applied
tariffs where the averages are weighted through the relevant trade flow data. For instance, an
average applied tariff for a particular product or product group imposed by a country or a
country group is the weighted average that weighs the applied tariff through imposing
countries, relevant products and the corresponding trade partners.
Regarding the NTMs, the preferred classification in this report is that of UNCTAD (2010) as
explained, again, in WTO (2012, Ch. 2). According to this classification, NTMs are grouped under
16 headings each characterized by a letter from “A: Sanitary and Phyto-Sanitary Measures” to
“P: Export-related measures.” Serious data limitations exist in the case of NTMs since not all
NTMs from the class “A” to the class “P” are reported in the relevant data sources for all products
and for all countries. The fraction of trade and the number of products that are affected from a
particular class of NTMs in particular aggregated product groups, e.g., animals, vegetables, hides
and skins, wood, food products, are available from the WITS database for some of the OIC
member countries.
RTA, FTA, and PTA databases are also used to collect the most recent data on trade agreements
among OIC countries.
To obtain country-specific information on agricultural trade policies and related issues, a survey
is prepared and conducted through an online platform. The survey includes 20 questions on
 the importance of agricultural trade on development and food security,
 the factors that limit the contribution of agricultural trade,
 the current state of factors that affect the agricultural trade flows most,
 the roles of marketing boards, state-owned enterprises, and cooperatives,
 the close trade partners in agricultural products,
 the ways by which further trade facilitation in agricultural products can be realized, and
 the networks of stakeholders and country partners in agricultural trade.
The main results from this survey are summarized, and the importance of these results is
discussed in Chapter 3. The survey has received a total of 61 responses from 21 OIC countries
(3 from the African, 10 from the Arab, and 8 from the Asian groups). However, around one-
fourth of these responses have been disregarded because of incompleteness. The total number
of responses taken into account in the analysis is N = 46.
One novelty of the agricultural trade policy review presented in this report originates from the
following: A quadrant analysis has been implemented to determine which products and