Preferential Trade Agreements and Trade Liberalization Efforts in the OIC Member States
With Special Emphasis on the TPS-OIC
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The selection was based on the following criteria:
• Only agreements for which there is evidence of actual implementation are considered,
i.e. those where at least some trade liberalisation measures have already been taken. This
implies that agreements such as the PTA among the D8 Countries (D8) (in force since 2011,
but still not implemented), the ECOTA trade agreement among members of the Economic
Cooperation Organization and the Pan-Arab Free Trade Area (PAFTA) were not selected.
• The selection provided a balance between agreements among members of the OIC and
those involving OIC members as well as other countries
• The agreements involving three out of five major trade partners of the OIC as a group:
China, EU and India are included, so that to enable contrasting the features of these
agreements
• Agreements involving a total of 28 OIC members are considered from diverse cultures
and geographies, including Africa, Middle East, Central, South and South-Eastern Asia. The 28
OIC members include the majority of main exporters and importers in the OIC group. They are
also diverse in terms of commodity structure of exports, including both major oil exporters,
and those exporting mainly various industrial products.
The analysis presents each of the selected agreement and subsequently provides a
comparative summary of their scope and characteristics. The analyses of individual
agreements provide a snapshot of their main provisions, first as regards trade in goods and in
the latter part also services trade and other deeper integration issues if such feature in
discussed agreements. The liberalisation effort or degree of trade liberalisation within a given
agreement is assessed by contrasting data on MFN tariffs and the effectively applied tariffs to
imports from the world as a whole with tariffs applied to imports from parties of the analysed
agreement. The main trade effects are assessed by first providing an overview of trade within
the partners of the agreement (and where relevant in comparison to trade patters with the
rest of the world), then looking at the evolution of intra-agreement trade, at the changes in
composition of trade and finally by references to empirical literature looking specifically at
effects of the considered agreements.
ASEAN
The ASEAN Preferential Trade Arrangement dates from 1977 and the subsequent signing of
the AFTA Agreement in 1992 spurred the regional trade integration process16 . It involved six
original ASEAN members Brunei Darussalam, Indonesia, Malaysia (all three also members of
16The section on ASEAN draws from the text of CARIS (2011) report for the European Commission DG TRADE,
Economic Integration in South East Asia and the Impact on the EU.