Beneficiaries | Methodology | Project status | Summary of results
A sound understanding of the business perspective of NTMs is critical to successfully identifying and defining national strategies and policies that help overcome barriers to trade. Businesses are best placed to inform decision-makers on developing policies as they have first-hand experience of dealing with the key challenges.
While the collection and dissemination of official NTM data has many advantages, such as being reliable, all-encompassing, and officially approved by national authorities, it is not possible to identify particular measures which are problematic to the business community and why. ITC's business survey aims to fill this information gap.
ITC, together with its national partners, conducts large-scale surveys of exporting and importing companies, across various sectors and sizes, about their experiences with burdensome regulations and procedures. This approach identifies at product, sector and partner country-level the predominant obstacles that the business sector faces when complying with NTMs. These include not only NTMs imposed by other countries, but also potential bottlenecks in the exporting country’s capabilities and technical facilities to meet regulations and demonstrate compliance with NTMs.
Building on the experience and knowledge of export and import businesses in dealing with NTM barriers, these surveys are a viable and a proven mechanism for a deeper understanding of the perception of NTMs, which by their nature are hard to quantify. The surveys enable targeted capacity building and better formulation of national strategies and policies. In particular, they identify:
- The most challenging NTMs by sector, company size and partner country;
- The existing national procedures and facilities which need to be strengthened in order to better support the business sector in exporting and importing their goods;
- Gaps in understanding specific measures, applied by certain countries or for specific products, resulting from a lack of access to relevant information.
Beneficiaries
The results of the business survey can provide valuable insights for policy-makers and allow them to better understand the specific and current needs of their business sectors. Governments can better define needs for action and capacity building when they understand businesses’ main concerns regarding NTMs.
National trade support institutions can benefit from the results of the business survey to better understand sector-specific needs of the business community, enabling better support and fostering more transparent commercial activities.
The ITC’s business survey is also helpful to the business community as it provides a platform where exporters and importers can voice their concerns to policy makers and share their experiences with others who may face similar problems with official regulations.
Finally, the NTM survey results can serve developing countries’ trade negotiators, as they provide evidence of the difficulties faced by local exporters due to foreign NTMs.
Methodology
NTM survey process - Extensive local ownership
The ITC business survey is based on a global methodology adjusted to country-specific requirements. The core part of NTM survey is identical in all surveyed countries, enabling cross-country analyses and comparison. The country-specific focus is developed in cooperation with local stakeholders ahead of the survey launch.
The NTM survey covers at least 90% of the total export value of each participating country (excluding minerals and arms). All sectors with more than 2% share in total exports are included in the survey. The survey does not cover companies trading arms and minerals because the export of minerals is generally not subject to trade barriers due to high demand, and the specificities of trade undertaken by large multinational companies. The export of arms is out of the scope of ITC activities.
ITC employs a two-step approach to the survey.
- In the first stage companies are contacted by phone for a short interview. Phone screens consist of questions identifying the main sector of activity of companies, direction of trade, and whether they have experienced burdensome NTMs. The companies for the phone screen interviews are selected based on the stratified random sampling, where the companies are first classified by sector and sample size calculated based on the size of the sector.
- The second stage includes detailed face-to-face interviews with representatives of companies who reported burdensome NTMs. During this stage all products exported or imported by the company, together with the list of their partner countries are recorded, followed by identifying products affected and countries applying the measure. All of the affected cases are recorded in detail to identify the exact nature of the problematic regulation and why they are burdensome. Each burdensome measure and the related procedural obstacle is then classified according to the NTM classification.
Following the completion of this survey, an in-depth country report is prepared in collaboration with local exports, highlighting the major obstacles together with policy recommendations. Before the publication of the report a national stakeholder meeting is held together with government officials and the business communities to discuss the results of the report. Comments and recommendations from the national stakeholders meeting are also incorporated into the final report.
The business perspective on NTMs is crucial to identifying and defining national strategies and policies that help overcome obstacles to trade. Exporters and importers have to deal with NTMs on a day-to-day basis, and they know best about the specific challenges and problems they face. The NTM survey will give a voice to these exporters and importers on their concerns regarding official regulations.
Project status