Preferential Trade Agreements and Trade Liberalization Efforts in the OIC Member States
With Special Emphasis on the TPS-OIC
182
and might generate more important trade and welfare effects on the current members. The benefits
would also be increased with the entry of potential future members.
Nevertheless, as a result of previous free trade agreements between Turkey and some of the
Contracting Countries of TPS-OIC such as Jordan, Malaysia, Pakistan (GSP+) and Bangladesh (EBA),
no effect would be expected in the trade between these countries as the TPS-OIC would not be in
position of offering improved market access conditions even if Fast Track were adopted. This also
applies to the agreement signed between other members such as the Malaysia-Pakistan FTA.
Therefore, the adoption of the Fast Track would not have any additional effect on the trade and
welfare between the pairs of countries that had FTAs or that receive unilateral preferences. Similarly,
the members of the GCC will be again not be required to make any further commitments as almost all
their tariffs are below 10%. The Fast Track would only increase the bilateral trade of the Contracting
Countries of TPS-OIC that do not have an FTA in place or where tariffs remain high.
Table 57 presents a tabulation of the share of tariff lines imported by each TPS-OIC member from
every other member by the height of the tariff. So, for example, Bangladesh applies a tariff of zero in
5.2% of the tariff lines imported from Jordan, 3.6% from Malaysia, and so on. At the same time,
Bangladesh applies a tariff between 0% and 10 % on 29.9% of the tariff lines imported from Jordan
and on 22.7% from Malaysia. At the bottom, for each reporter, we present the number of tariff lines
with positive imports from each member. At the same time, we present in Table 58 the share of
bilateral imports by height of tariff. These two tables will help us to analyze in more detail the
potential effect of the Fast Track.
When the tariff is zero (or low) the effect on the bilateral imports would be zero (or low). This
implies that the top rows for each partner identify the share of trade that is expected to not be largely
unaffected by any liberalisation schedule. Hence with regard to 95.4% of the Malaysian imports from
Jordan, no effect is expected as the tariff applied by Malaysia is zero. This means that the effect of any
liberalisation effort will be circumscribed in just the remaining 4.6% of Malaysian imports from
Jordan. A similar case applies to the imports of Jordan from Qatar as 90% of their value is under zero
tariffs. In general, Malaysia presents the highest share of imports under zero MFN tariffs, suggesting
that it will be the country where the effects will be comparatively smaller (once the already
liberalised trade under FTAs is excluded). Turkey, on the other hand, has comparatively few tariff
lines at zero; any reduction will be limited to the imports from the GCC, the countries with which it
does not have an FTA.
On the other hand Pakistan and Bangladesh present, in general, the lowest share of bilateral imports
with other Parties of TPS-OIC System under MFN equal to zero. This suggests that the effects of the
liberalisation are expected to be larger for these two countries. In the case of Pakistan, there is a
large share of bilateral imports in products with tariffs between 0% and 10% that, according to Art.
4, will be subjected to liberalisation. This suggest that, although it is impossible to identify the
products that will be included in the negative lists, it is possible to identify the number of lines (and
the imports associated with them) that will not be included. Although the tariffs are low, all those
products with tariffs between 0% and 10% will not be included and, therefore, will be subject to