Regional Trade Arrangements and Economies in Transition: The Central Asian Countries

When it dissolved in 1991, the members of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA) contained half a billion people (Table 1) - more than either the European Union or NAFTA today - and these countries were largely insulated from the market-driven international economy. This paper analyses the progress of the reintegration of the formerly centrally planned economies into the global trading system, focusing on the relationship between multilateral processes and regional integration schemes, and taking the Central Asian countries as a case study. Almost all the countries in transition from central planning have accepted the WTO rulebased system in principle, and the potential danger of regionalism proving more attractive than multilateralism has not eventuated.