Experiences from the current and past financial crises, the imperatives of more broadly based and equitable social and economic development, and other regional priorities like counter-terrorism, drugs and disease control, and environmental protection, support the value of regional cooperation and integration, both sub-regionally in the Greater Mekong Subregion, and regionally in ASEAN and the broader ASEAN +3 or East Asian region.

Bangladesh’s integration into the global trade regime is largely attributed to the robustness of its export performance, particularly that by the export-oriented manufacturing industries. With small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) accounting for more than 90 per cent of the total industrial units, and having a share of 12 per cent to 40 per cent of total export earnings, any attempt to facilitate trade procedures is likely to have a significant impact on this group of businesses.

To bring about mutual benefits and development in the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS), China has actively participated in the GMS Economic Cooperation Programme (GMS Programme) to promote social and economic development, which is supported by the Asian Development Bank. Achievements have been made in the areas of infrastructure improvement, mutual trade expansion, and increased flow of goods and experts. However, various problems and obstacles have appeared following the implementation of some of the regional initiatives.

This paper quantifies the economic impact of Bangladesh, China, India and Myanmar (BCIM) economic cooperation and compares it with the alternative option of expanding South Asian Free Trade Area (SAFTA) with China and Myanmar. The paper examines the macro-economic performance of the individual countries and the current level of trade among the BCIM member countries at the regional level. In addition, the paper attempts to explore the level underlying rationale, peripheral benefits and primacy of forming BCIM rather than expanding SAFTA.

Focusing on electronic lodgment through web-based applications of value-added service providers as the IT-based trade facilitation measure, the survey of Customs Brokers conducted in this study revealed that lodgment time in the Philippines dropped to one hour or less as a result, compared to previous lodgment times of ½ to one day. However, total clearance time of 1-2 days remained unchanged, implying that manually performed tasks within the lodgment-to-clearance interval may be slowing down overall procedures...

Although, some of the Asian economies, like, China, India and Viet Nam, are growing at a faster pace they are not doing well in terms of development of basic capabilities in terms of education, health and skill formation. This we found when we ranked countries in terms of Social Development Index and compared them with ranking in terms of GDP growth rate alone. In fact, the not so fast growing economies, like the Republic of Korea, do well in terms of distribution of resources towards its average citizen and in terms of other development criteria.

South Asia has been considered as the least integrated region in the world despite its attempts to liberalize trade using various unilateral, bilateral, regional and multilateral arrangements. It has long been argued that the limited success of South Asia to liberalize regional trade was due to limited tariff reductions and remaining barriers present in trade agreements; less complementarities in production and consumption; and political friction among the countries.

The fierce competition in the global textiles and clothing (T&C) market unleashed by the expiry of the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) Agreement on Textiles and Clothing (ATC) on 31 December 2004 has adversely affected Nepal’s ready-made garment (RMG) industry, which ranks among the two top export products of the country.

Existing empirical studies on trade costs and trade facilitation largely focus on aggregate impacts of reform due to data availability. We take a step toward filling in this gap in literature. Using the World Bank Enterprises Surveys, the study extends the scope of empirical literature to firm dimension with a focus on SMEs. For Asia countries, we find that improvement in trade facilitation indicators tend to increase the probability that SMEs will become exporter -- as well as their export propensity.

Thailand has been actively involved in the GMS programme since its creation. While intraregional trade has increased substantially, there are concerns about how the programme fits with the ASEAN, ASEAN-China and other triangular initiatives, as well as the slow implementation of some of the main initiatives.