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Abstract
This study investigates the impacts of alternative trade facilitation measures on trade flows with a special focus on five landlocked African OIC countries, namely Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Niger and Uganda. By employing a diverse set of data and methodology, it is found that there are significant gains from trade facilitation and improved logistics infrastructure. This benefit is significantly higher in the case of African countries. While infrastructure investments in logistics generate the largest gains, landlocked countries can attain additional gains from efficiency improvements in trade facilitation measures. Nevertheless, the aggregate impact of logistics performance remains significantly higher than the impacts of soft trade facilitation measures in both landlocked and coastal countries. This study also presents the potential gains for the five landlocked African OIC countries in case of a simulated improvement in their trade facilitation performance.