The Enabling Trade Index (ETI) was developed within the context of the World Economic Forum’s Transportation Industry Partnership program, and was first published in The Global Enabling Trade Report 2008. The ETI measures the extent to which individual economies have developed institutions, policies, and services facilitating the free flow of goods over borders and to destination. The structure of the Index reflects the main enablers of trade, breaking them into four overall issue areas, captured in the subindexes: 1) The market access subindex measures the extent to which the policy framework of the country welcomes foreign goods into the economy and enables access to foreign markets for its exporters. 2) The border administration subindex assesses the extent to which the administration at the border facilitates the entry and exit of goods. 3) The transport and communications infrastructure subindex takes into account whether the country has in place the transport and communications infrastructure necessary to facilitate the movement of goods within the country and across the border. 4) The business environment subindex looks at the quality of governance as well as at the overarching regulatory and security environment impacting the business of importers and exporters active in the country. Each of these four subindexes is composed in turn of a number of pillars of enabling trade, of which there are nine in all. These are: 1) Domestic and foreign market access; 2) Efficiency of customs administration; 3) Efficiency of import-export procedures; 4) Transparency of border administration; 5) Availability and quality of transport infrastructure; 6) Availability and quality of transport services; 7) Availability and use of ICTs; 8) Regulatory environment; 9) Physical security.
