Strengthening the Compliance of the OIC Member States
to International Standards
21
At the same time, government policies affecting the supply side in African countries have made it
difficult for growers and exporters to access important inputs. Groundnuts are just one example of a
product in which traditional agricultural policies have not necessarily served African countries well in
more recent times. The real issue facing groundnut exporters is therefore one of how to upgrade the
whole supply chain to deal with a rapidly evolving marketplace. Standards are only one part of the
equation, and arguably not the most important aspect of what needs to be a broad-based upgrading
process.
Source: Shepherd (2014).
2.5
Trends in the Use of Standards
There is no global database covering the full range of standards issued by countries, both mandatory
and voluntary. It is therefore difficult to track the evolution of the standards environment over time.
Anecdotally, the importance of standards is generally acknowledged to be increasing in relative terms as
tariffs decline and other market access barriers become more apparent. The rise of GVC production
platforms has also given a fillip to the development of private standards in relevant sectors. Similarly,
consumers in many markets are becoming more concerned with issues of food safety and quality, which
means that standardization activity in agri-business sectors also appears to be increasing.
One source that can be consulted to give a partial picture of this dynamic in the standardization
environment is the WTO. WTO members are required to notify new SPS measures and TBTs to the
relevant WTO committees. Counting these notifications therefore gives a picture of the number of new
mandatory standards in these two areas introduced by countries in a given year. It is important to
highlight that WTO notifications do not capture private or voluntary standards, but only mandatory
public ones. However, there is significant empirical evidence indicating that measures notified to the
WTO can have substantial trade effects, so the picture presented here is certainly of relevance to traders
in OIC member states.
Figure 4 presents the number of SPS and TBT notifications across all WTO members at five year
intervals from 1995 to 2015 (partial coverage due to data lag). The first point that emerges is that WTO
members together introduce tens of thousands of new mandatory, public standards each year, covering
all sectors. Although data are unavailable, the number of new voluntary private standards is likely to be
even higher. The standards playing field is therefore a complex one for companies to navigate, and
without measures like harmonization, there is real scope for national standards to unintentionally
contribute to trade costs and hold back export growth, particularly in the developing world.