Preferential Trade Agreements and Trade Liberalization Efforts in the OIC Member States
With Special Emphasis on the TPS-OIC
137
Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). The customs union agreement
entered into force in 2000 and it provides for elimination of customs duties in intra- WAEMU
trade and introduction of a common external tariff (CET) for imports from third countries that
was to be implemented from 2000.
Import duties and taxes applied to unprocessed local products have been in principle re-
moved since mid-1996. The removal of customs tariffs on imports of products meeting the
rules of origin (adopted in 2003) should also take place, although it is difficult to assess the
current situation. As an illustration WTO data suggest that as of 2011 non-agricultural ex-
ports from Mali to Burkina Faso benefited from negligible preference margin (0.6%, weighted)
from trade-weighted MFN tariff rate of 5.7% as only below 20% of all tariff lines representing
a negligible share of Mali exports were duty free. 37 In the case of 2011 non-agricultural exports
from Togo to Benin, Mali, and Burkina Faso preference margins were below 5% with only 10-
21% of tariff lines duty free. Among its main export partners only Niger provided substantial
preference margins to Togo.38 The actual implementation of the duty free regime appears to
remain a challenge given reported barriers such as the practice of questioning community
origin of goods by customs agents at border posts further confounded by a range of other non-
tariff barriers (e.g. quantitative restrictions, unwarranted controls, long and repetitive
formalities at borders) all increasing the costs of trade between WAEMU members (WTO,
2010a).
The WAEMU CET applicable to imports from third countries has four bands (0, 5, 10 and 20%).
WTO calculations show that in 2009, the simple average tariff was 12.1% (14.6% for
agricultural products) (WTO, 2009b). Several other duties and taxes are also applicable at the
customs frontier, including the statistical charge, the Community Solidarity Levy and the
special import tax that are partly but not fully standardised among WAEMU members. A
substantial barrier to effective functioning of the customs union was lack of the single point of
entry regime.39 This implied that in practice third-country products imported to one of
WAEMU countries could not be easily re-exported to another country without the need to
again pay all applicable duties. Further obstacles include lack of mutual recognition of national
technical standards and rules and some unilaterally established prohibitions or authorization
regimes (WTO, 2010a).
Beyond the original customs union agreement several subsequent WAEMU agreements cover a
range of areas key for trade and economic integration. These apply to liberalisation of services
trade in certain sectors, public procurement, WAEMU-level competition regime with a
common law covering anticompetitive agreements; abuse of a dominant position, state aid,
37WTOMali tariff profile,
[accessed 8 May 2014]
38 [accessed 8 May
2014].
39 This was the case at least until 2010 but has likely not been implemented till present.