Improving Transnational Transport Corridors
In the OIC Member Countries: Concepts and Cases
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constrained in various ways. It may also be difficult for some OIC countries to fully
perceive the benefits of deep collaboration in matters of trade and transport due to the
fortunate position they may have with respect to being providers of oil products. None the
less, transport corridor development does have demonstrable benefits in lowering
transport costs that should be of interest.
3. Trade facilitation
Trade facilitation plays a very important role in the success of a transport corridor. It
includes many attributes ranging from trade agreements to travel time and transport
costs. Which attribute is more important than the others really depends on the objectives
of the transport corridors development. Most transport corridors in Asia and Africa have
an objective to open-up the trade potential of many landlocked countries. In the MENA
region, transport corridors are mainly catalysts to enhance regional integration and trade
cooperation, although this is not yet achieved.
The OIC transport corridors are characterized by many non-physical barriers such as
unofficial payments (corruption) and cumbersome border crossing. All OIC countries have
at least one bilateral FTA and being participants of international transport conventions.
However implementation of and compliance with the agreements vary among countries,
resulted in low common standards.
Low intra trade is also characterizing the OIC transport corridors. The average is less than
10% of the total trade, while it is 50-60% in the EU. A major objective of multinational
transport corridors is thus to stimulate and facilitate trade between countries along the
corridor rather than seeing at a means to access trading partners on other continents.
4. Social factors
A transport corridor does not only mobilize trade, but also materially affected the quality
of people’s lives. Increased trade and foreign investments will ultimately result in poverty
reduction. The freedom of movement relates to work opportunities.
A successful transport corridor like TEN-T plays its role very well in accommodating and
promoting these factors. Several OIC transport corridors like CAREC and TRACECA are
also successful in this sense, although to a lesser extent. With about 10% of the workforce
active in transport in a wide meaning, improvements of the transport systems obviously
affect the daily working lives of millions of truck drivers, railway workers and those
servicing the transport sector.
5. Safety, security and the legal liability
Road safety in general is a crucial issue for the OIC countries as many of them are
suffering from high mortality rates on the streets and traffic related injuries. National
road safety figures are largely available, but this is not the case with road fatalities along
OIC transport corridors. This reflects the importance of including this aspect in the
corridor data and statistics collection system.
In terms of internal security and especially legal liability, especially with respect to
liability for damage, theft, and other causes of loss, is not yet well developed in the OIC