This paper discusses trade facilitation in the context of enhancing trading links between South and Southeast Asia, in a manner understandable to the non-specialist. Presently, these two Asian regions tend to trade preferentially with distant markets. One of the reasons cited for the limited...

The continued difficulties of the World Trade Organization to achieve further multilateral trade liberalization in the Doha Round negotiations have raised questions about its continued relevance. This paper firstly identifies and assesses the key developments in the Doha Round that have...

Within the context of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) Scorecard mechanism developed by the ASEAN Secretariat to monitor the implementation of the AEC Blueprint, the study focuses on the current state, performance and impact of investment liberalization and facilitation, trade facilitation,...

Several South Asian countries have joined the current wave of bilateral and sub-regional free trade agreements (FTA) in the region. The dynamics of regional cooperation is supported by the rapid economic expansion which is creating complementarities for trade expansion. Though the intra-regional...

The current mandate of the Negotiating Group for Trade Facilitation (NGTF) is to clarify and improve the three articles, viz. Articles V, VIII and X of the GATT 1994. India has initiated several measures as part of the Trade Facilitation (TF) programme. While most of the measures have already...

Employing the Annual Trade Policy issued each year by the Ministry of Commerce as a simplified case study, this paper examines the reasons for the ineffectiveness of this policy instrument and the inherent inconsistencies and conflicting signals to the market that it contains. Capacity...

This paper look into the key issues concerning trade facilitation and SMEs, particularly how information technology related measures have influenced SMEs. India undertook focused and dedicated trade facilitation (TF) initiatives for improving infrastructure and the regulatory regime dealing with...

During the past few decades, the landscape of the world economy has changed. New trade patterns reflect the globalization of the supply chain and intra-industry trade, and increasing flows between neighboring countries and trading blocs with similar factor endowments. Similarly, the approach to...

This study attempts to quantify the links between infrastructure investment and poverty reduction using a multi-region general equilibrium model, supplemented with household survey data for the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS). Infrastructure investment is an important step in economic...