In an increasingly interconnected world, rules of origin—laws determining the national source of a product—play a crucial role in international trade. Yet, with each country setting its own standards, the global market faces a complex web of regulations that often impedes rather than facilitates trade. "The Urgent Call for Harmonizing Preferential Rules of Origin" by Hatem Mabrouk delves into these complexities and challenges. The book reveals how preferential rules of origin, designed to determine eligibility for tariff preferences under trade agreements, are often manipulated for protectionist and political aims, creating significant obstacles for global producers and traders. Through rigorous analysis and case studies, Mabrouk explores the detrimental impacts of these systems and proposes a harmonized approach aligned with the World Trade Organization to streamline and improve international trade practices. Mabrouk's proposal offers a robust blueprint for policymakers and trade bodies to refine global trade mechanisms. "The Urgent Call for Harmonizing Preferential Rules of Origin" is essential reading for anyone involved in international trade or global economics, advocating for clearer and fairer trade regulations to enhance global economic prosperity.

Trade integration contributes substantially to economic development and poverty alleviation. In recent years much progress was made to liberalize the trade regime, but customs procedures are often still complex, costly and non-transparent. This situation leads to misallocation of resources. 'Customs Modernization Handbook' provides an overview of the key elements of a successful customs modernization strategy and draws lessons from a number of successful customs reforms as well as from customs reform projects that have been undertaken by the World Bank. It describes a number of key import procedures, that have proved particularly troublesome for customs administrations and traders, and provides practical guidelines to enhance their efficiency. The Handbook also reviews the appropriate legal framework for customs operations as well as strategies to combat corruption.

In a modern world with rapidly growing international trade, countries compete less based on the availability of natural resources, geographical advantages, and lower labor costs and more on factors related to firms' ability to enter and compete in new markets. One such factor is the ability to demonstrate the quality and safety of goods and services expected by consumers and confirm compliance with international standards. To assure such compliance, a sound quality infrastructure (QI) ecosystem is essential. Jointly developed by the World Bank Group and the National Metrology Institute of Germany, this guide is designed to help development partners and governments analyze a country's quality infrastructure ecosystems and provide recommendations to design and implement reforms and enhance the capacity of their QI institutions.

A companion to the 'Customs Modernization Handbook', this book provides case studies on customs modernization initiatives in seven countries: Bolivia, Morocco, Mozambique, Peru, the Philippines, Turkey, and Uganda. The initiatives in each of these countries show similarities as well as differences in their approach and design. Some have relied on a model of independent revenue authorities (Uganda and Peru), others have called upon private sector service providers to initiate the modernization process (Mozambique), others have taken the drastic step of a complete overhaul of their customs staff (Bolivia and Mozambique), others introduced new information technology to streamline customs processes and to integrate other members of the trading community into an electronic network (Ghana), while still others have approached the modernization process as a pragmatic, well-focused, result-oriented process.

Border clearance processes by customs and other agencies are among the most important and problematic links in the global supply chain. Delays and costs at the border undermine a country’s competitiveness, either by taxing imported inputs with deadweight inefficiencies or by adding costs and reducing the competitiveness of exports. This book provides a practical guide to assist policy makers, administrators, and border management professionals with information and advice on how to improve border management systems, procedures, and institutions.

This edition provides a comprehensive methodological framework for collection and compilation of international merchandise trade statistics in all countries, irrespective of the level of development of their statistical system. The conceptual framework reflects both the multipurpose nature of these statistics and concern for availability of the adequate data sources and data compilation procedures. It is intended primarily for the producers of international trade statistics, particularly the staff of national statistical offices and/or customs involved in the collection and compilation of merchandise trade statistics, but may be also useful to researchers and other users interested in better understanding the nature of trade statistics.

This book presents an overview of the key debates that took place during the Economic and Social Council meetings at the 2007 High-level Segment, at which ECOSOC organized its first biennial Development Cooperation Forum. The discussions also revolved around the theme of the second Annual Ministerial Review, "Implementing the internationally agreed goals and commitments in regard to sustainable development."--P. 4 of cover.