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Browsing Journal Articles by Subject "Economic integration"

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    Bangkok Agreement and BIMSTEC: Crawling Regional Economic Groupings in Asia
    (2001) Kelegama, Saman
    Both the Bangkok Agreement (BA) and Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Thailand Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) have offered opportunities for economic cooperation in the Asian region. Four countries that are (or were) associated with the former are members of the latter. The BA (formed in 1975) is a preferential trading arrangement (PTA) whereas BIMSTEC (formed in 1997) is a sectoral cooperation arrangement, but has announced its intention of moving to a PTA in the future. However, the results of both regional economic groupings have so far not been impressive. The BA did not produce the desired results due to inherent shortcomings in the Agreement and the ineffectiveness of the preferential system, inter alia: a) exclusion of nontariff barriers from the preferences; b) low product coverage by the preferential tariffs; and c) low preferential margins. Moreover, the PTA was not combined with direct measures for sectoral cooperation. Although the BIMSTEC emphasizes the latter, for these to be effective in the absence of a PTA, there has to be a high degree of commitment to the regional group by member countries, harmonization of standards, and an institutional framework. All these requirements are lacking in the BIMSTEC at present. BIMSTEC could have become a PTA if Thailand and Myanmar joined the BA but regional geo-politics and commitment to ASEAN have prevented this process. Surprisingly, BIMSTEC is considering a new PTA when a mechanism already exists under the BA. © 2001 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.
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    Open Regionalism in the Indian Ocean: How Relevant is the APEC Model for IOR-ARC?
    (2000) Kelegama, Saman
    The Indian Ocean Rim Association of Regional Cooperation (IORARC) came into being in 1997. It is experimenting with open regionalism for strengthening economic integration in the region. The paper examines the concept of open regionalism as practiced in APEC and its validity for IORARC given the initial conditions in the region and the level of development of the member nations. The paper argues that the APEC model has little relevance for IOR-ARC, and open regionalism could be put into practice only partially in the region. It argues that IOR-ARC should stick to the WTO timetable of trade liberalization and focus more on non-controversial areas of open regionalism, viz., trade and investment facilitation, economic and technical cooperation, and maintaining a trade and investment dialogue. A stronger institutional framework to overlook the implementation of the agreed proposals in these areas of open regionalism will be necessar y if IORARC is to strengthen economic integration and achieve some results. In the modern-day world, in contrast to the era of sailing vessels, sharing of Indian Ocean waters may have less relevance for effective economic integration.
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