FACILITATING INTRA-OIC TRADE:
Improving the Efficiency of the Customs Procedures in the OIC Member States
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of transport), but not including fees and charges which are limited in amount to
the approximate cost of services rendered
 UNECE-Customs Convention on the International Transport of Goods under
Cover of TIR Carnets (TIR Convention): The main objective of the TIR
Convention is to facilitate international trade through simplifying the procedures
for international carriage of goods by road vehicle. The convention entered into
force in 1978 and has been adopted by 68 countries. Under the TIR System,
international transit operation is covered by a single transit document, the TIR
Carnet, which reduces the risk of presenting inaccurate information to Customs
administrations. 2
 UNECE-International Convention on the Harmonization of Frontier Control of
Goods: The objective of the Convention is “reducing the requirements for
completing formalities as well as the number and duration of controls, in
particular by national and international co-ordination of control procedures and
of their methods of application” (Article 2 of the Convention). The provisions of
the Convention apply to all control services of the contracting countries of the
goods being imported, exported or in transit. The Convention has entered into
force on October 15th, 1985 and has been acceded by 57 countries.
 WTO-Customs Valuation Agreement: It is an Uruguay Round Agreement which
was concluded in 1994. The WTO Customs Valuation Agreement is a result of
the 1986–1994 Uruguay Round negotiations, but its terms largely repeat the
1979 GATT Valuation Code (Rosenow and O’shea 2010). The WTO Customs
Valuation Agreement provides a methodology for determining the customs
value of the imported product. The agreement takes into consideration the
inadequate capacity in some developing country members. In this regard, the
Article 20 of the Agreement “Special and Differential Treatment” provides
transitional period for these countries and requests the Developed County
Members to extend their technical support to the requesting countries.
It is worth noting that, these agreements illustrate the willingness of some of the
countries to harmonize their trade procedures. On the other hand, despite growing
interest to trade facilitation in recent years, some of the countries have not acceded to
them yet.
Besides the international conventions several declarations and frameworks have been
adopted by the WCO and UNECE such as UN/CEFACT Recommendation on
Establishing Single Window, United Nations Layout Key for Trade Documents, WCO
SAFE Framework of Standards, WCO Data Model etc.
2 More information is available o