The findings stemming from the research is published in the UK House of Commons’ Exiting the EU Committee’s Fourth Report of Session 2017-2019 on “The Future UK-EU Relationship”. Following the evidence that the Chair Holder provided to the House of Commons, the work produced by the Committee has widely been acclaimed and the contribution has become a reference point for Brexit discussions.

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.

Studying trends and peculiarities of Japanese Economic partnership agreements and FTAs shows that they tend to become more complicated by scope and details. However, their utilization rate remains insufficient: less than 40 [percent. The transfer to the FTAs with country groups helps to overcome the problem of multiple rules of origin: already existing FTA with ASEAN corresponds to the situation of complicated value chains; planned EU-Japan agreement, RCEP and TPP-2 go in the same direction.