Preferential Trade Agreements and Trade Liberalization Efforts in the OIC Member States
With Special Emphasis on the TPS-OIC
60
and CUs can be notified under both the Enabling Clause or Art.XXIV, PTAs and EIAs have to be
notified exclusively under the Enabling Clause and GATS Art.V, respectively. This table also
suggests that in trade in goods, FTAs are the most common type of agreement in place,
representing more than half of the notified agreements. However, this might be misleading as
CUs tend to group the bilateral trend of many pairs of countries. Data on monetary unions are
not present as they are not requested to be notified to the WTO.
Table 4, on the other hand, indicates the number of RTAs by coverage type (Goods, Services or
both). The number of agreements in this table represents the number of "physical" RTAs
whilst in the previous table, the number of notifications by type, many of them refer to a single
RTA. As we have seen, only one agreement (the Economic European Area) is a single services
agreement. Agreements cover either goods or both, suggesting that services agreements tend
to be "mounted" on goods agreements.
Table 3:RTAs by Type and Notification
Enabling
Clause
Gats Art.
V.
GATT Art.
XXIV
Total
Customs Unions 9 17 26
Economic Integration Agreement 121 121
Free Trade Agreements 13 210 223
Preferential Trade Agreements 15 15
Total 37 121 227 385
Source: World Trade Organisation. Data correct up to July 2014 and includes formation and
accessions
Table 4:RTAs by Type
Goods 135
Services 1
Goods and services 116
Total 252
Source: World Trade Organisation. Data correct up to July 2014. Only physical RTAs are
considered