COMCEC Trade Outlook 2017
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from the average in the region to the world average could have a significant impact on trade
volumes, raising exports by 9.5 percent and imports by 11.5 percent, while all other
determinants are constant (ceteris paribus). There are several indices or reports developed by
the international institutions to identify the bottlenecks in countries which hinder international
trade. The World Bank Doing Business Report is one of these reports. World Bank introduced a
newmethodology for measuring ease of trading across borders in 2015. Trading across borders,
measures the time and cost (excluding tariffs) for documentary compliance and border
compliance within the overall process of exporting and importing a shipment of goods.15 The
distance to frontier score shows how far on average an economy is from the best performance
achieved by any economy on Trading Across Borders indicator. Figure below shows the DTF
scores for OIC compared to other regions. OECD high income countries are very close to the
frontier while OIC countries are around 50 per cent below the frontier. This underlies the
importance of policies to facilitate trade in the OIC countries.
Figure 41: Comparative DTF Scores
Source: Authors’ calculation based on WB Doing Business data
In many OIC countries, excessive delays at customs and the resulting costs are one of the most
important non-tariff barriers affecting international trade. As shown in Figure 42 the cost and
time associated with submitting the necessary documents to clear the goods is above the world
average in the OIC countries. While world average for time needed for documentary compliance
in imports is 70 hours, the OIC average is 103 hours. On the other hand while average costs
encountered for documentary compliance in imports is 180 US dollars in world, it is 303 US
dollars in the OIC on average.
15 For detailed information on the methodology please visit World Bank
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Distance to frontier score
Trading Across Borders - Distance to Frontier
Middle East&North Africa OECD high income Sub-Saharan Africa OIC