Indicators to Monitor Regional Trade Integration in Africa
More than 350 Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs) are currently in force and more than one-half of global trade is carried out under preferential terms. A strong set of results based indicators can help to illuminate the costs and benefits of policy i...
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2014
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2013/09/18327985/indicators-monitor-regional-trade-integration-africa http://hdl.handle.net/10986/16658 |
| Summary: | More than 350 Regional Trade Agreements
(RTAs) are currently in force and more than one-half of
global trade is carried out under preferential terms. A
strong set of results based indicators can help to
illuminate the costs and benefits of policy initiatives and,
thus, inform the broader public dialogue on complementary
reforms. The following discussion takes stock of the
monitoring practices in Africa with respect to regional
trade initiatives and evaluates the need for further
indicator development. The assessment thereby focuses on the
downstream outcomes of existing trade commitments and the
measurement of how regional trade policies affect ordinary
traders, producers, and consumers. This spotlight on
impact-monitoring for the general population also helps to
establish whether decision makers have the necessary tools
at hand to evaluate the linkages between regional trade
arrangements and poverty reduction. This paper is divided
into following sections: section one gives background and
motivation for the analysis; section two briefly discusses
integration monitoring systems and related indicators in
general; section three presents an overview of regional
trade indicators that are currently used by policy-makers in
sub-Saharan Africa; section four surveys the respective
monitoring practices in other regions of the world; and
section five provides suggestions for indicator development
in Africa based on the practices and gaps identified in the
earlier parts of the report. |
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