FACILITATING INTRA-OIC TRADE:
Improving the Efficiency of the Customs Procedures in the OIC Member States
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CONCLUSION
Increasing international trade is one of the common goals of all the countries in the
world. This common aim has resulted in increasing the joint efforts towards eliminating
the trade barriers. In this framework, countries mainly focused on eliminating the tariffs
and non-tariff barriers until the last decade. As a result of the multilateral, regional and
unilateral initiatives, the tariffs decreased dramatically. Not only the developed
countries but also many developing countries have reduced the customs tariffs.
After the decline in the tariffs, countries shifted their focus on other issues which are
considered to be barriers to trade. One of these issues is the high trade transaction costs.
Many studies have been carried out to determine the factors increasing international
trade costs. Moreover, some of these studies measured the impact of high transaction
costs on foreign trade. The studies concluded that, reducing the transaction costs, in
other words facilitating trade contributes to increasing both imports and exports of the
countries.
Most of the international and national efforts towards facilitating international trade
focused on increasing the efficiency of customs procedures. For example, the WTO
Trade Facilitation Negotiations, which was concluded recently focused on the same
issues covered by the Revised Kyoto Convention. The WTO Trade Facilitation
Agreement has simple and clear provisions and ensures technical assistance and
capacity building support to the developing countries and the LDCs to help them
implement its provisions.
The growing interest on trade facilitation encouraged the international institutions to
give more emphasis on the issue. World Bank, UN Institutions and OECD are some of
these institutions which have been carrying out important studies during the last decade.
Several indices and indicators have been developed to measure the developments with
regards to trade facilitation in countries. Moreover, these indicators are updated
regularly to follow-up impact of reforms on trade.
Despite ongoing global efforts on facilitating trade and increasing the efficiency of
customs formalities, performance of some of the developing countries and LDCs did not
improve so much. These countries did not accede to the international conventions and
did not develop their customs formalities accurately. The reasons of these behaviors
were investigated by many studies during the recent years. The studies show that,
underdeveloped legislative framework and infrastructure, inadequate financial
resources, lack of adequate human resources and institutional capacity, inefficient
coordination among both the relevant government agencies and the private sector are
the limiting factors in customs reforms in some countries.
These factors are well noted by the WTO Trade Facilitation Negotiations. The WTO
Trade Facilitation Agreement envisages support to technical assistance and capacity