DATA COLLECTION AND
ANALYSIS
One problem that is shared by those who prepare a TPF
and those who must execute its recommendations is
the difficulty in obtaining comprehensive, reliable and
timely economic data. In a perfect world, the public
and private sectors would have easy access to a
wealth of information on trade and investment in both
goods and services, as well as extensive figures on
national production, employment, and consumption
in a wide range of sectors. In the course of writing
a TPF, researchers may find their queries stalled on
several of these points. Some types of data may be
unavailable, while others are dated, incomplete or
simply wrong. The assessment report on Botswana,
for example, found very significant deviations between
the declared values of imports into Botswana and
the corresponding value data for exports from the
partner countries, as well as similar discrepancies
for Botswana’s exports that the partners imports.
These shortcomings present both a short-term and a
long-term problem. The researcher must often reach
defensible conclusions on the basis of incomplete
data, while also proposing ways that the country’s
collection, analysis and dissemination of data might
be improved in the future.
By 2020, enhance capacity-building support to
developing countries, including for least developed
countries and small island developing States, to increase
significantly the availability of high-quality,
timely and
reliable data disaggregated by income, gender, age, race,
ethnicity, migratory status, disability, geographic location
and other characteristics relevant in national contexts.
By 2030, build on existing initiatives to develop
measurements of progress on sustainable development
that complement gross domestic product, and support
statistical capacity-building in developing countries.
Two of the 19 targets under Sustainable Development
Goal 17:
Revitalize the Global Partnership for
Sustainable Development
PARTNERSHIPS
FOR THE GOALS
In the short term, the TPF researchers need to collect
all available data but must also be selective in its use.
It is important to resist the temptation to treat a TPF,
or at least its introductory sections, as a data dump
into which all manner of raw facts and figures can be
stuffed. What most matters in a TPF is not the bulk of
data but the quality of analysis, and the writers should
focus their attention on those statistics and other
information that are most relevant to their argument. It
may be appropriate to provide statistical appendices,
but the body of the document should present only
that information that helps the readers to understand
the argument being presented. It is also important for
researchers to verify the information that they collect.
Their task can often be facilitated by drawing upon
previous analyses, such as (for example) a recent
trade policy review of the country, but in so doing they
should use only the most recent information. If that
TPR presents information that was collected from
some national or international source, it is important
for the researchers to find out whether that same
source has since been updated.
The longer-term goal is to enhance the capacity of
policymakers to find and properly utilize data in real
time. The effectiveness of a trade ministry is determined
to a considerable degree by its capacity to manage
70 TRADE POLICY FRAMEWORKS FOR DEVELOPING COUNTRIES: A MANUAL OF BEST PRACTICES
the flow of numbers, words and ideas. The information
and communications with which it must deal come in
a wide variety of forms: economic data on actual trade
and the barriers (tariff and non-tariff) imposed by the
country and its partners; legal understanding of the
existing treaties, laws, and regulations; knowledge of
the positions taken by other government ministries,
as well by the many components of civil society
(principally business, labour, agriculture and nongovernmental organizations); the views of like-minded
countries with which the country may engage in
coalition diplomacy; and political intelligence on the
interests, objectives, and influence of the key parties in
the partner country. A well-run trade ministry devotes
much of its resources to gathering, processing and
exploiting each of these types of information. In other
words, it must be prepared to calculate the data,
consult at home and coordinate with partners.
Issues such as intellectual property rights and
investment also pose difficult problems for analysts.
Once again there are shortcomings in the availability
and reliability of data, as well as greater legal
complexities. These are areas where a country may do
well to rely upon the analytical and technical assistance
made available by international organizations and
developments banks. Provided that one takes into
account their potential biases and agendas, it can also
be helpful to receive assistance from think tanks and
non-governmental organizations.
Researchers should take the fullest advantage of all
sources of trade, investment, and other economic
data, utilizing (among others) the sources listed in box
10. For comparative purposes, it may also be useful to
show where the country fits relative to its neighbours
and other peers in various trade-related indices. This
most prominently includes the Doing Business data of
the World Bank, but also includes a great many other
sources that provide rankings of countries on various
measures. These include the following:
• Index of economic freedom (Heritage Foundation/
Wall Street Journal)
• Foreign direct investment regulatory restrictiveness
index (OECD).
• Corruption perception index (Transparency
International).
• Human development index (United Nations
Development Programme).
• Services trade restrictiveness index (World Bank).
• Logistics performance index (World Bank)
There are steps that a TPF can recommend in order
to assist a country in its capacity to collect, analyse,
and disseminate data. The Rwanda TPF, for example,
observed that an Industrial Observatory Unit had been
set up in that country by the United Nations Industrial
Development Organization (UNIDO), but, for example,
and does so in large part through the computable
general equilibrium trade model of the Global Trade
Analysis Project. The TPF for Jamaica relies heavily
upon an analysis of the country’s revealed comparative
advantage in specific sectors and goods in order to
identify priority areas for further development.