How Has Regional Integration Taken Place in Other Regions? : Lessons for South Asia
As the momentum for multilateral trade liberalization has slowed, an increasing amount of liberalization is taking place at a regional level. As of April 2015, there are 406 regional trade agreements (RTAs) in force worldwide, more than double the...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Brief |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2015
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2015/06/24599908/regional-integration-taken-place-other-regions-lessons-south-asia http://hdl.handle.net/10986/22030 |
| Summary: | As the momentum for multilateral trade
liberalization has slowed, an increasing amount of
liberalization is taking place at a regional level. As of
April 2015, there are 406 regional trade agreements (RTAs)
in force worldwide, more than double the number in force in
2000. These agreements cover over half of international
trade. Countries engage in regional cooperation for a
variety of reasons. First, it is easier to achieve agreement
among a small number of regional partners than it is
globally. Second, regional cooperation takes advantage of
existing natural tendencies for regional trade that arise
from geography and shared culture. This reinforces the
regional division of labor already taking place among firms.
Global value chains, in which lead firms organize a division
of labor for complex products among many countries, often
turn out to have a regional focus. Think, for example, of
the electronics value chain in East Asia, and the automotive
value chains focused on the United States, Germany, and
Japan. South Asia itself is a small but growing part of
value chains in textiles and apparel with both regional
depth and cross-linkages to East Asia. This piece will focus
on four aspects of trade liberalization (trade facilitation,
non-tariff measures/barriers, intra-regional investment, and
energy cooperation) that go beyond traditional preferential
tariff reduction to illustrate both the potential of
south-south liberalization and some of the particular
challenges faced by South Asia. There is widespread
agreement that deeper regional engagement in these areas
will benefit the people of South Asia. |
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