2.1 Trade facilitation measures
A number of studies have been conducted to identify the barriers to free trade and the
facilitation measures taken to facilitate free trade. We present here a review of the
literature so as to develop an inventory of barriers to free trade.
APF Canada (1999) reports the relative importance of three kinds of trade facilitation
measures (customs, standards and regulatory conformance, and businessmobility) for the
Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation and found that the complexity of customs regulations,
the lack of information on customs rules and regulations, administrative guidelines and
rulings, and problems with the mechanism for appealing customs decisions are the main
issues related to customs. The key issues related to standards include the lack of
transparency in standards and the complexity of standards and regulations.
CIES (2006) notes that the most important barrier to services is the set of regulations
that operates behind the border, which impact both foreign suppliers and local
firms. CIES (2006) has highlighted a few studies that report on the barriers to trade in
services and specifically in the logistics arena. Institute of Southeast Asian Studies
(ISEAS, 1985) has reported two essential types of trade barriers to services, namely,
border restrictions and investment restrictions. Border restrictions limit the flow of
services into the country, while investment restrictions affect a foreign firm’s competitive position relative to that of the domestic firms. Dee (2005) has estimated the barriers to
trade in services by converting the qualitative information on regulations in the services
sector into a quantitative index. Further, Sidorenko and Findlay (2003) examine the links
between services trade barriers, and beyond-the-border domestic regulation. They report
that in order to benefit from increase in the services trade, governments need to adopt
coherent practices on regulating competition policy and market access.