FACILITATING INTRA-OIC TRADE:
Improving the Efficiency of the Customs Procedures in the OIC Member States
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governments need to identify the problematic areas and the specific measures that will
solve the problems and decrease the trade costs to increase their competitiveness.
Assessing the needs
Various indicators developed by the international institutions give a view on the status
of countries on their needs in terms of trade facilitation. For example, Doing Business
Indicators of the World Bank measures the average time and cost required during
exporting and importing goods by sea transport since 2004 and it is widely used by
business people in estimating their possible cost in making trade and researchers in
estimating the effect on trade (see Sadikov 2007, Milner et al. 2008, Djankov et al.
2006).
Trade Facilitation Indicators (TFI) prepared by the OECD is another important
instrument for the countries to assess their situation. The OECD website 1 explains the
main objective of these indicators as “To help governments improve their border
procedures, reduce trade costs, boost trade flows and reap greater benefits from
international trade, OECD has developed a set of trade facilitation indicators that
identify areas for action and enable the potential impact of reforms to be assessed”.
Other indicators such as Logistics Performance Index (World Bank) are Global
Enabling Trade Report (World Economic Forum) are useful sources to determine the
areas for facilitating trade.
The rankings and the results of such indices provide the opportunity for the
governments to compare themselves with the other countries and identify the areas
which they need to take some measures. Therefore, the results can be used as a first step
for making needs assessments.
Who will make the assessment and how? is another question to be answered. The
obstacles leading to higher trade costs fall into the responsibility of different ministries
such as ministry of transport, ministry of customs or finance, ministry of trade etc.
Therefore, the governments shall assign a coordinator ministry to ensure coordination
for making the needs assessment. Moreover, coordination with the private sector and its
involvement in the process is also essential to identify the obstacles.
ADB and UNESCAP (2013) suggests that the assessment may best be conducted by an
independent team of trade facilitation experts or analysts under the supervision of a
small task force of public and private organizations involved in regulating and/or
conducting trade. The study also underlines that in addition to the available data from
the relevant international institutions, following information should be obtained through
surveys during making the needs assessment.
(i) Characteristics and needs of the business,