Trade Facilitation and Economic Integration in South Asia: Understanding the Regional Perspective

Nassir Wani

Chapter Chapter 12 in Trade and Development in Central and South Asia, 2025, pp 293-333 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract South Asia (SAARC) is widely regarded as one of the least economically integrated regions in the world despite geographical proximity, shared history, and cultural ties. Over the past decade, SAARC has initiated significant efforts to enhance integration through liberalisation, and therefore, intraregional trade surged to around 5% of the region’s total trade. In the purview of these scenarios, this study examines the axioms of trade facilitation and non-tariff barriers and their impact on trade volumes by employing an econometric model, namely the computable general equilibrium (CGE) model based on the Global Trade Analysis Project. This study opens an avenue in a general equilibrium framework that makes predictions more likely by using certain model assumptions, and, therefore, findings suggest focusing on key industries to demonstrate the effectiveness of reforms and their benefits, strengthening SAFTA by reducing both tariff and non-tariff barriers (NTBs), and incorporating investment and trade in services into SAFTA. Based on the findings of the study, the study favours regional integration and suggests policies to achieve the potential of regional cooperation and integration. The key sectors, such as textiles and clothing (T&C), automobiles and parts, and various manufacturing goods, experience significant growth due to trade facilitation improvements. The expansion of T&C exports, in particular, leads to an increase in women’s employment opportunities and is expected to reduce the gender wage disparity in South Asia.

Keywords: Trade facilitation; Economic integration; South Asia; Regional perspective; F02; F11; F13; F17 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-981-95-2728-1_12

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9789819527281

DOI: 10.1007/978-981-95-2728-1_12

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Springer Books from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().