Economic Gains from Deepening Nexus Between South Asia and Central Asia: Expectations and Needed Interventions

Nassir Wani

Chapter Chapter 16 in Trade and Development in Central and South Asia, 2025, pp 465-496 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract Over the past decade, economic ties between South Asia and Central Asia have strengthened; however, full integration remains limited. This study highlights the importance of innovative strategies in fostering regional integration to enhance economic linkages. The chapter explores various innovative approaches to revitalising economic relations and boosting trade between South Asia and Central Asia. It examines evolving patterns in trade, investment, and migration while identifying key obstacles that hinder connectivity. This study delves into less-explored areas, particularly the advantages of strengthening economic ties in CASA, and supports the integration with Southeast Asia, thereby promoting digitalisation and environmental sustainability. Moreover, improved market access in Central Asia would provide essential diversification opportunities for CASA exports. These challenges are particularly critical for South Asia, which remains the least integrated region, with intra-regional trade at just 5.6%. The findings suggest that a regional integration strategy encompassing tariff liberalisation, relaxation of non-tariff barriers (NTBs), improving trade facilitation measures, and increased FDI could boost GDP by 0.7 to 11.7% in South Asia and by 0.3 to 3.7% in Central Asia. Furthermore, reforms aimed at improvising interregional integration and multilateral partnerships, the economic benefits in terms of GDP will increase by 7.6% in South Asia and 5.7% in Central Asia. Furthermore, the study assesses the potential benefits of overcoming these barriers and provides recommendations to improve regional integration.

Keywords: CASA; Gains from services; Regionalism; Trade liberalisation; Gravity model; F05; F09; F11; F13; F15 (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_16

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

DOI: 10.1007/978-981-95-2728-1_16

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 ().