Abstract—The WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement recently
went into force following its ratification by two third of WTO
members on 22 February 2017. The world trade report 2015
estimates showed that the full implementation of the TFA could
reduce trade costs by an average of 14.3% and boost global
trade by up to $1 trillion per year, with the biggest gains in the
poorest countries. Oman is aiming to diversify its economy
away from oil while boosting the trade and logistics sector. The
objective of this paper is to study the possible effects of WTO
trade facilitation agreement on Oman’s economy. The paper
used the standard GTAP Computable General Equilibrium
(CGE) model using the latest GTAP database v9 and additional
data. The GTAP database was modified to include Ad-valorem
equivalents of non-tariff barriers (AVE) calculated for the GCC
countries considering Oman as part of the GCC common
market. The simulation considered two main scenarios: I)
Oman increase in trade facilitation by 10% because of the
important investment in logistics and II) the GCC increase
trade facilitation by 7% due to enforcement of WTO Trade
Facilitation Agreement in 2017. The overall results showed
significant positive increase in trade and welfare. The first
scenario yielded 4.3 per cent gain in Oman's GDP and boosted
export sales of many food commodities, transport equipment
and other manufacturing. The second scenario showed
relatively moderate results. UAE and Bahrain gained
significantly in terms of welfare and GDP as they are trade
driven economies with good logistic sectors. The welfare gains
among all the GCC countries varied from 2 to 4.9%. Overall all
the sectors showed significant positive increase in exports, most
especially the food commodities. However, the same food
commodities showed a significant decrease in imports while gas
products showed dramatic increase in importation.
Index Terms—CGE, GCC, non-tariff barriers, TFA.
The authors are with Department of Natural Resource Economics,
College of Agricultural and Marine Science, Sultan Qaboos University, 123
Al-Khoud, Oman (e-mail: p020150@studnet.squ.edu.om,
s117765@student.squ.edu.om, boughanh@squ.edu.om).
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Cite: Ahmed Al Shamakhi, Abdallah Akintola, and Houcine Boughanmi, "Assessing the Impact of WTO Trade Facilitation
Agreement on Oman’s Economy," International Journal of Trade, Economics and Finance vol.9, no.6, pp. 244-250, 2018.