This research funded by World Trade Organization Chair Program hosted by SQU, and done by Abdallah Akintola under the guidance of Dr Houcine Boughanmi, Dr. Hemesiri Kotagama and Dr. Lokman Zaibet, sought to explore the trade potential of Oman with…
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…
The Gulf Cooperation Council countries (GCC) have recently embarked in an energy subsidy reform following the drastic drop of international oil prices in 2014. The reform consists of increasing energy prices (fuel, electricity, gas) in order to…
African countries offer many investment opportunities and also urgently need global investment finance. Along the value chains of the agro-industrial sector there are many global challenges for African countries to attract foreign direct investment…
Regional trade could be a powerful engine of economic growth and sustainable job creation. However, South Africa’s exports to sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) are typically smaller and more short-lived than its exports to its traditional markets. This is…
In the wake of the impasse in the Doha Development Round (DDR) of multilateral trade talks, a number of countries have been looking at alternative ways to advance their trade agendas – one of which involves the negotiation of plurilateral trade…
For many years, the European Union has been an important market for agricultural products from Africa. However, African agricultural exporters have often found the European market difficult to access because of a raft of NTMs that add to exporters’…
In recent years, African countries have been giving greater priority to building their industrial capacity, placing particular emphasis on manufacturing in order to reduce their dependency on commodity trade. However, most African countries face…
The economies of southern Africa all face significant development challenges, not helped by the fact that many of these countries are ill-prepared for the demands of the rapidly advancing digital era. Given its heterogeneous membership and therefore…
The service sector constitutes an important and a growing sector of the global economy as well as in the Arab region. In Oman, the service sector accounts for the highest share in the sectoral composition of the GDP and constitutes a crucial…