FACILITATING INTRA-OIC TRADE:
Improving the Efficiency of the Customs Procedures in the OIC Member States
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Some of the Member States not listed in the Study also conduct consultations with the
private sector. For example, Malaysia has established Customs Consultative Panel,
which brings the relevant stakeholders including the relevant government agencies and
the private sector for exchanging views on customs related issues.
On the other hand, some of the Member States are consulting with the private sector
without establishing such mechanisms. Meetings are organized with the private sector
upon request of the customs or the private sector for discussing issues related to
customs.
In practice, such consultations with the private sector both under established
mechanisms or not did not give significant results in facilitating trade in most of the
Member States due to various reasons. These reasons include conflicting interests,
financial constraints, limited human resources and underdeveloped institutional
capabilities.
3.1.11. Customs Valuation
Customs valuation is one of the essential issues to be considered by the Customs
Administrations. The WTO Member OIC Countries are party to the WTO Customs
Valuation Agreement. Therefore they need to implement the provisions of this
agreement. However, according to Trade Policy Review Reports of the WTO
Secretariat some of the Member States face difficulties in implementing the provisions
of the Agreement. They did not notify the WTO on their legislations on implementing
the provisions of the Agreement. The reports also state that, some of the countries are
still implementing minimum values and experiencing disputes with the traders on
customs valuation.
The WTO (in cooperation with the WCO) is providing technical assistance to the
countries to improve the implementation of Customs Valuation Agreement in
developing countries including some of the OIC Member States. In this framework,
three regional seminars were organized for English Speaking African Countries, for
Arab and Middle East Countries and for Central and Eastern European countries in
2013. Moreover, Iran, Togo, Brunei and Tajikistan hosted national seminars organized
by the WTO in 2013.
3.1.12. Other Issues
There are some common practices among the Customs Administrations of the OIC
Member States which are not compatible with the international standards. For example
use of customs brokers and pre-shipment inspection in some or all the goods imported
are required by some of the Member States. These practices increase the transaction
costs especially for the SMEs of these countries.