The South Asian Economies comprising Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka (SAEs) represent 22 percent of world’s population but they only account for just over 1 percent of world’s trade. In 2003, agricultural trade in the SAEs amounted to US$ 22 billion and it accounted for approximately 4 percent of world’s agricultural trade and 23 percent of the regional trade. During the 1970s, SAEs had highly protected trade regimes supported by high tariffs, Non-Tariff Barriers (NTBs) and stringent controls on exchange.

India has introduced several trade facilitation related measures in the last couple of years. The pro-active strategy adopted by the Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC) has helped in introducing several policy measures which have not only streamlined the role of the customs department but has also helped industry in a major way without compromising collection of revenue. However, a private sector survey in India conducted in 2005/6 identified customs valuation as an issue of particular concern among other TF related initiatives.

In line with most developing countries, the last decade has seen Fiji adopt an export oriented, outward-looking approach to trade relations. Import restrictions have been largely lifted in favour of export promotion, and as such Fiji now has a more liberalized or open economy with increased volumes of both exports and imports. A concept very much related to trade liberalization and openness is trade facilitation.

The overall objective of the movement of natural persons (MNP) in the ASEAN region is to contribute to expanding trade in services and to deepening economic integration. However, the regional movement of human resources has proceeded beyond the expansion of trade and has persisted in response to labor market imbalances. Thus, movement of workers in the region can be viewed from two perspectives: trade negotiations and labor market disparities.

To take full advantage of the opportunity provided by integration with the global economy – reflected partly by membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO) - it is essential that developing countries have built-up appropriate supply capacity to ably meet with the standards of consumers and governments in other countries; this point is especially true in the leading sector of growth for developing economies – the services sector.

One of the most important RTA in Asia and the Pacific is the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) Free Trade Area, also referred to as AFTA, which was aimed at eliminating tariff barriers among member countries through the Agreement on the Common Effective Preferential Tariff (CEPT) scheme. It applied to all products from ASEAN member countries defined as those that had at least 40% ASEAN content.

This research examines the impact of institutional quality on trade in selected Pacific Island Countries (PICs). Four indicators of institutional quality are chosen: government effectiveness, rule of law, regulatory quality and control of corruption; for six PICs: Fiji, Kiribati, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga and Vanuatu. Many of the PICs have been characterised with narrow export structures. Other than Fiji, most countries reveal widening long-term balance of trade deficits.

World trade is increasingly being dominated by preferential trade agreements that have taken precedence over multilateral trade negotiations. Within Asia and the Pacific an explosion of bilateral deals is taking place that seems likely to produce a tangle of hub-spoke trade blocs centered on major Asian or Pacific countries.

Customs Valuation of goods is an important aspect of trade facilitation. In Nepal, the process of customs valuation for the customs tariff was systematized only after the introduction of Customs Act, 1962. In 1997, the Customs Act was amended and basic valuation provisions based on transaction price were included in the Act. However, ACV is yet not fully implemented. At present Nepal's customs valuation system is hybrid of BDN and ACV. Nepal became a member of WTO on April 23, 2004.

This study compares the treatment of trade facilitation in four selected regional trade agreements, AFTA, APEC, SAFTA and PACER, and in one bilateral free trade agreement being the Australia-Singapore Free Trade Agreement (ASFTA), with a view to determining model trade facilitation principles and measures which may be instructive for developing country negotiators and policy makers.