{"id":1808,"date":"2016-12-15T13:00:41","date_gmt":"2016-12-15T12:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/?p=1808"},"modified":"2016-12-09T09:39:02","modified_gmt":"2016-12-09T08:39:02","slug":"trading-across-borders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/2016\/12\/15\/trading-across-borders\/","title":{"rendered":"Trading across borders"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week, in the post Reforms that make doing business easier<\/a>, we discussed the Ease of Doing Business<\/strong> rankings<\/strong>. These appear in the World Bank<\/a>\u2019s Doing Business Report<\/a><\/strong>.\u00a0We focused on a few sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) countries, and what they did recently to improve their ranks. There are many important that the World Bank<\/a> takes into account when building this index. Today we want to focus on the trading across borders indicator <\/strong>\u2013 particularly important for doing international business!<\/p>\n

This indicator relates to various aspects of the logistics related to international trade. Improvement in these areas may lead to trade growth, export diversification and economic growth.<\/p>\n

Among trade reformers, many SSA countries made trading across borders easier by improving their existing electronic systems for both imports and exports<\/strong>. This has reduced the cost and time of documentary and border compliance.<\/p>\n

\"Source:<\/a>
Source: Doing Business Report 2017<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Ghana, Madagascar, Mauritania, Niger, Rwanda and Togo<\/strong> introduced or improved electronic submission and processing of documents for imports<\/strong>. Out of these, the best ranked in the overall index is Rwanda (56). Further, Ghana and Niger improved 6 and 10 positions respectively this last year. \u00a0Actually, there is a great deal of simple actions a government can take that may have an important impact on these rankings. For example, Rwanda, Ghana and Niger removed the pre-arrival assessment inspection for imports which reduced import documentary compliance time.<\/p>\n

\"Ghana<\/a>
Ghana has improved processing of import documents<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

For instance, Madagascar, Togo and Uganda<\/strong> introduced or improved electronic submission and processing of documents for exports<\/strong> between 2015 and 2016. Particularly, Madagascar and Togo have a lot of room to improve given their poor performance, 167th<\/sup> and 154th<\/sup> respectively out of 190 countries, in the 2017 report. However, if more measures that help simplify logistics in the trade sector are implemented, along with other socially-oriented policies, these countries may experience a remarkable improvement in a wider range of indicators<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

It is obvious that there are a lot of factors that play a role in the overall performance of a specific country. The good news is that SSA countries have a great opportunity to leapfrog in technology <\/strong>and rapidly adapt trade to a better electronic framework. <\/strong>This will result in productivity and economic growth gains that hopefully, will contribute improving living conditions for all.<\/p>\n

Any experiences trading with these countries?<\/p>\n

Nadim Elayan, Research Assistant at IESE Business School, collaborated in this article. <\/em><\/p>\n

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