Preferential Trade Agreements and Trade Liberalization Efforts in the OIC Member States
With Special Emphasis on the TPS-OIC
167
Table 36: FK Index of Import Similarity between the TPS Contracting States and the World (non-oil
imports)
Partner 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012
Bahrain 0.23 0.22 0.23 0.23
Bangladesh 0.29 0.26 0.28 0.31 0.30 0.34 0.33 0.38 0.38 0.35
Jordan 0.36 0.27 0.36 0.33 0.34 0.27 0.30 0.30 0.32 0.30
Malaysia 0.07 0.07 0.09 0.10 0.09 0.12 0.11 0.15 0.15 0.10
Oman 0.21 0.16 0.23 0.21 0.23 0.22 0.21 0.22 0.24 0.25
Pakistan 0.25 0.24 0.30 0.26 0.28 0.25 0.24 0.25 0.29 0.27
Qatar 0.27 0.18 0.30 0.28 0.30 0.31 0.29 0.28 0.30 0.31
Saudi Arabia 0.31 0.34 0.32 0.31 0.33 0.32 0.34 0.32 0.36 0.33
Turkey 0.12 0.14 0.15 0.15 0.16 0.14 0.14 0.15 0.15 0.15
UAE 0.35 0.32 0.33 0.37 0.38 0.36 0.39 0.36 0.38 0.39
Source: TradeSift calculations using HS 6-digit data from Comtrade via WITS
5.4. COUNTRY PRODUCT ANALYSIS
As discussed above there is a reasonable prima facie case for suggesting that the general effect on
each of the individual Contracting Countries of TPS-OIC will be low. Ultimately this is driven by the
relatively low level of obligatory commitments embedded in the agreement (with a limited product
coverage and potentially small reductions) and by the fact that many of the members (particularly
the GCC members) would not be affected by the reductions and/or they already have deeper
agreements with some of the members. In addition for some members, the share of the trade with
the other Parties of TPS-OIC System tends to be small once oil is removed. All this indicates that the
effect from the obligatory part of the agreement is expected to be, overall, small.
Nevertheless, there might be for some members, products that are affected in the sense that they
might receive either some preferences or that the member might need to give preferences to the
other members. Therefore, it is important to identify the main products that each of the Parties of the
TPS-OIC System trade with the rest of the agreement since these would be, in principle, the products
that might be central to understanding the effects on exports and on imports. It is important to
remark, however, that it is very hard to identify the export effect as this will depend primarily on the
reductions that the other members make in these products and these will be different depending on
the importing party.
Bahrain
2011 is the year for which the latest trade data is reported by Bahrain. Although it would be possible
to use mirror data for 2012 and 2013, the fact that many other TPS countries also did not report their
trade for these years makes this alternative unreliable. Therefore, we focus on the 2011 data as
reported by Bahrain.