The Pan-Arab Free Trade Area, negotiated under auspices of the Arab League, came into force in 1997. Under the agreement all tariffs on goods of Arab origin were to be removed by January 1, 2005. This paper summarizes the results of a firm-level survey in nine countries regarding the implementation of the Pan-Arab Free Trade Area. A majority of respondent companies report that tariffs on intra-regional trade have largely been removed, and that there has been a marked improvement in customs clearance-related procedures. Costs associated with administrative red tape and weaknesses in transport-related infrastructure services are ranked as the most important constraints to intra-regional trade. This suggests that from a policy perspective, efforts to reduce real trade costs deserve priority, including transportation and logistics services. Periodic monitoring and assessment of trade incentives and performance would help governments to benchmark performance and identify priority areas for action, at both the national and the sub-regional levels.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.: