Regional Cooperation and Integration in South Asia: Nepal Perspective1 By Bishnu Pant, Sushmita Pradhan and Santosh Gartaula2 1. Introduction South Asian countries have increasingly acknowledged that the regional approaches and common actions are essential to accomplish their development goals. The benefits from pursuing regional cooperation and integration are myriad, as it is a procedure by which country’s economic system becomes more regionally interconnected, speeding up economic growth, lessening poverty, and raising country’s employment level. It helps to reduce growth gaps between developing countries through regional trade integration, closer financial linkages, supply chains as well as speeds up growth of slow economies. Regional integration offers the prospect to widen national markets and productions and advances intraregional investment and trade in services. In order to achieve equitable growth, nations now require extended markets, together with advancement in infrastructure, energy and connectivity and integration into international systems. These solutions are particularly relevant for many South Asian countries that have small economies, large populations or are land‐locked. Less developing countries like Nepal, Afghanistan and Bhutan often find it difficult to fund the large infrastructural projects making a regional approach more attractive. Linking small economies with more advanced economies can unravel the benefits of assemblage and scale economies and multiply investment prospects and growth remote to the current hub of development. Regional cooperation was initiated formally in South Asia with the establishment of the South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation (SAARC) in 1985. Since its inception regional cooperation has further advanced and extended especially in preferential trade areas. The establishment of South Asian Preferential Trading Agreement (SAFTA), which was officially adopted by the 12th SAARC Summit held in Islamabad in 2004 is an important mile stone towards improving the regional integration in South Asia. It is expected to open up the South Asian regional economies for the betterment of the lives of the people and reduce the regional poverty. This paper attempts to examine whether the initiatives such as these have been successful in achieving the desired success in strengthening the regional integration in South Asia and contribute to the betterment of the lives of the people, with special reference to Nepal. It also attempts to identify issues and limitations in the implementations of various regional cooperation and trade agreements and make recommendations for their effective implementations. 1
2
Paper submitted to 15th Annual GDN Conference , Accra- Ghana, 18- 20 June 2014
The authors are associated with the Institute for Integrated Development Studies (IIDS), Kathmandu, Nepal
1
2. Regional Cooperation in South Asia South Asia is one of the least integrated regions in the world and has been characterized by excessive poverty and large population. Several policy and institutional limitations have added to this dichotomy. Nepal, Bhutan and Afghanistan are landlocked, where as Bangladesh, India and Pakistan are located in the border areas and suffer from lack of market integration. South Asian countries, which opened up their economies after the independence period in the 1940s, always had highly protectionist economic policies until late 1970s by way of maintaining high tariff and non‐tariff barriers, state interventions in economic activity, strict exchange controls and discouragement of foreign investments. Sri Lanka instigated liberalization policy route in 1977 which was followed by other countries in the 1980s. Although the liberalization processes were tentative and uneven until the early 1990s, the region wholly started to liberalize with limited policy barriers to trade and foreign investment only from mid 1990s. In the ending years of 1970s, the seven inner South Asian nations that included Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka agreed upon the creation of a trade bloc called South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation (SAARC) and to provide a platform for the people of South Asia to work together in a spirit of friendship, trust and understanding. Dhaka Declaration of 13th SAARC Summit in November 2005 included Afghanistan in the forum as its 8th newest member. The objective of SAARC is to accelerate the process of economic and social development in member states through joint‐actions in the agreed areas of cooperation. The SAARC policies aim to promote welfare economics, collective self‐reliance among the countries of South Asia, and to accelerate socio‐cultural development in the region. After a decade of establishment of SAARC, a regional economic cooperation agreement called South Asian Preferential Trade Agreement (SAPTA) came into existence in 1995. This agreement is considered to be major stepping –stone towards higher level of intra‐regional trade liberalization and economic cooperation among the member countries. The main objective of SAPTA was to promote regional co‐
operation for the benefit of the people of the region by strengthening intra‐regional economic cooperation and development of national economies. SAPTA was expected to provide all the SAARC member countries preferential treatment by way of reducing import tariffs on eligible items. This arrangement provides special and the most favorable treatment to the least developed countries in the region. In order to further strengthen the regional economic cooperation, a new agreement called South Asian Free Trade Agreement (SAFTA) officially came into existence in 2006. The signing of agreement of SAFTA has increased considerable interest in regional economic integration in South Asian countries. The SAFTA has become a parallel initiative to the multilateral trade liberalization commitments of the South Asian countries. Although the SAFTA progression has spawn some degree of interest in the region, some concerns about the very usefulness of SAFTA have however been mounting in recent years in light of more liberal bilateral free trade agreements (FTAs)—as well as preferential access that could conceivably be granted through alternative trading arrangements—among SAARC countries. The inability of the member countries to diversify their export structure in favor of more modern products has resulted in slower export growth and lower value realization. SAFTA aims to reduce tariffs to 0 to 5 percent over ten year period. It requires member countries like India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka to set their custom tariff under 5 percent by 2013, where as it has allowed the least developed countries of the region namely Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives and Nepal longer time frames to reduce or eliminate tariffs by 2016. This provision has been argued to be 2
favourable specially to LDC members. But concerns have been raised on two grounds; firstly the first stage of tariff reduction seems to be redundant for all South Asian countries. And secondly, there are also concerns about the second stage of tariff liberalization. Because the three year gap between LDC and NLDC members appears to be low, as the presence of negative/sensitive lists and so called "non or para tariff" barrier by the NLDC members restricts significantly the potentials of the market access of the products from LDC members to the non‐ LDCs. Effects SAPTA and SAFTA in SAARC region Regional Integration agreements (RIAs) have led to major developments in international relations between and among many countries, specifically in increasing international trade and investment and in the formation of regional trading blocs. Almost all the industrial nations and a large number of developing nations have been a part of at least one, or more than one such agreement. The South Asian countries were highly enthusiastic when the RTAs such as SAPTA and SAFTA came into existence. However, the achievements of these RTAs seem to be rather mixed. Table 1 shows intra‐regional trade Table 1: Intra‐Regional Trade of SAARC Member Countries, 1990‐ 2010 Countries Afghanistan Trade share with SAARC(USD millions) World (USD millions) Bangladesh Trade share with SAARC(USD millions) World (USD millions) Bhutan Trade share with SAARC(USD millions) World (USD millions) India Trade share with SAARC(USD millions) World (USD millions) Maldives Trade share with SAARC(USD millions) World (USD millions) 1990
1995
2000
2005 2010
88.235378
59
(14.4)
610.36689
23
61.301161
95
(11.07)
553.41044
78
229.77630
04
(30.1)
763.07656
55
1439.9679
1 (43.6) 3299.8210
96 2610.5942
04
(29.2)
8922.1465
86
318.64889
3
(5.9)
5326.5962
03
1235.5443
15
(12.8)
9625.2459
72
1152.4582
16
(7.8)
14590.353
67
2309.2223
29 (10.3) 22345.324
6 4797.7975
91
(10.8)
44309.798
66
NA
NA
NA
NA
NA
NA
NA NA NA
NA
1766.21
(2.7)
2296.65
(2.4)
65028.22
92963.7
6621.5509
96 2.7) 238100.15
21 13217.583
41
(2.3)
573709.18
6
58.310875
11
(14.3)
406.46421
19
103.39224
72
(22.2)
465.16162
18
146.48523
41 (17.3) 843.62011
62 205.28795
(15.2)
1342.0923
82
656.50084
75
(1.5)
41804.514
02
24.046
(12.6)
189.985
3
Nepal Trade share with SAARC(USD millions) World (USD millions) Pakistan Trade share with SAARC(USD millions) World (USD millions) Sri Lanka Trade share with SAARC(USD millions) World (USD millions) 94.800460
91
(11.8)
797.94311
8
161.96185
7
(14.8)
1090.8938
1
895.8
(39.1)
1783.7 (61.8) 2291
2882.6 2626.9962
58
(58.9)
4457.0616
66
352.68723
36
(2.7)
12970.463
38
456.19578
96
(2.3)
19453.044
08
695.60082
61
(3.5)
19605.379
67
2562.7602
56 (6.1) 41468.873
19 5432.9058
96
(8.3)
65173.132
58
647
(7.8)
897.21598
(7.3)
12146.779
5
2636.7100
74 (17.2) 15246.829
06 3493.0543
46
(15.6)
22293.752
89
255.72664
26
(5.6)
4531.6943
16
8282
Source: http://aric.adb.org/integrationindicators, parenthesis value in percentage of SAARC member countries with other South Asia countries as well as their total trade. This table shows that there has not been any significant increment in the intra‐regional trade among the SAARC countries. Likewise, Figure 1 provides a portrait of intra‐regional trade shares for SAARC, which clearly Figure 1: Contribution of SAARC’s share of Trade in the World Source: ADB, 2012. 4
shows that the growth in intra‐regional trade among SAARC countries has been very slow. For example, in 2012, SAARC’s intra regional trade was only 4.3% of the total South Asian trade, even after almost 30 years of the establishment SAARC. The South Asian countries seem to be progressively more closed relative to the world market and trying to intensify their market access ignoring the SAFTA. That is why the intra‐regional trade has fell and limiting to just about 4 percent of the region's total trade in 2012. This scenario is in sharp contrast with the intra‐regional trade amongst ASEAN member countries, which is estimated at around 26%. Both SAPTA and SAFTA were expected to attract more FDIs in the South Asian region. In 1995, percentage of inward FDI stock of SAARC countries out of the total world FDI amounted to 0.37 percent, which increased to 0.51 percent in 2005 (UNCTAD 2014). However, after initiation of SAFTA, the inward FDI stock rapidly increased and reached 1.1 percent in 2012. Table 2 shows inward foreign direct investment flows for each SAARC countries. The table reveals that even though the FDI received by SAARC countries have significantly improved over a period three decades, more than 84% of FDI was received only by India in 2012. Nepal received only about 0.16% of total FDI received by SAARC region during the same period. This demonstrates the rising economic power of India amongst others in the region. Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) can play a crucial role in the development process, especially in conflict incapacitated economy like Nepal. Conflict, political instability, uncertain market condition, weak investment policy could be some reasons for low FDI inflow in Nepal. Table 2: Inward foreign direct investment (FDI) stock for SAARC country (in %) SAARC Countries Afghanistan Bangladesh Bhutan India Maldives Nepal Pakistan Sri Lanka Total (USD in millions) Source: UNCTAD, 2012 1980
0.60
24.89
0.02
24.39
0.26
0.07
37.32
12.45
1852.182
1985
0.40
16.50
0.01
26.42
0.12
0.07
38.18
18.29
2826.51
1995
0.09
4.60
0.02
43.28
0.47
0.11
41.50
9.93
13032.94
2005 0.97 5.85 0.04 71.46 0.55 0.21 16.89 4.05 60457.67 2012
0.58
2.66
0.01
84.03
0.61
0.16
9.43
2.51
269347.2
3. Challenges of Regional Agreements of SAARC It has been well established that trade cooperation and integration has many benefits that will enhance domestic demand through improved trade policy and large income gains. However, there are number of challenges free trade agreements may face such as competition, variance and differences of countries that hinder trade, cooperation and implementation obscurities, infrastructure connectivity and closed market issues. If SAARC region has to benefit from regional trade agreements such as SAPTA and SAFTA, member countries will need to have very small negative/sensitive list, rules of origins need to be made simple and transparent, transparency of anti‐dumping and countervailing measures and investment liberalization. In fact these are the broad measures that need to addressed for the success of SAARC economic integration. Suhail & Sreejesh (2011) argues that the thrust of SAPTA lies in the regional 5
cooperation than on trade liberalization. Moinuddin (2013) noted that little has been achieved under these instruments, and barring Afghanistan and Nepal, all the South Asian economies depend heavily on markets outside the regions as their export destination. He further he argues that South Asian countries will need to address not only economic factors such as trade facilitation and infrastructure development, but also some non‐economic factors like creating political will and building confidence. From the above discussions it has been very clear that during the last 29 years of formation of SAARC, there has been slow progress in achieving its objectives. During this period a roadmap was chartered out converting SAPTA into SAFTA and into South Asian Customs Union and finally into South Asian Economic Union by the year 2020. Politics has been one of the major hurdle in slowing the economic integration process in the region. Unless there is strong political willingness, charting roadmap alone will lead to nowhere. South Asia is power driven by the vibrant economic growth of India. South Asian countries have been engaging in uneven bilateral agreement from political fear with the powerful growing India’s economy against the welfare of their economies. However, Nepal, Bhutan and Sri Lanka has expanded their manufacturing aptitude, trade and economic growth and FDIs due to free trade agreements with India. The composition of every South Asian country is such that it has less trade with each other and more with Western countries like Europe and North America where they export complimentary goods like agricultural products, textile, garments, labor (all the regions countries are rich in labor) while importing capital goods and petroleum. Most of the countries in the region have production of comparative goods which limits the scope of enhancing regional trade. Trade facilitation measures are a related to reducing delays in customs and seaport clearance. Despite territorial proximity, there has been low trade in the region due to high transaction cost. Trade facilitation is crucial for not only inter‐regional trade but for overall trade which clearly South Asia has been lagging behind though there are provisions under SAFTA that needs to be re‐evaluated and prioritized suiting the requirement for trade facilitation for all the regional countries. Tariffs in the region remains to be relatively high as SAFTA allows tariffs to remain up to 5 percent which is quite high and SAFTA is evidently protective as the numbers in the negative list are also high. Physical and bureaucratic barriers to trade are also very significant in context to the region. It is evident that substantial progression in trade facilitation is important especially for the landlocked countries. According to indicators of the World Bank’s ‘Doing Business’ report which has measures like trade cost, time taken for trading and procedures, South Asia has poor trade across border as they do not have automated trading systems. Although South Asian nations have already begun with computerized customs reform, these have been put into practice only partly which is revealed by bureaucratic barriers and long time taken to trade. Efficiency of trading arrangements across borders is important for expansion of trade as delays can dislocate and interrupt the total production structure. The SAARC region has acute asymmetrical power balance as India encompasses more than 75 percent of the region’s GDP and more than 70 percent of population, territorial dependency in India is high and it possesses enormous military power compared to other countries in the region. All these aspects have set off India to be distinguished as a menace by other countries. South Asian regional integration has been largely unsuccessful. SAARC is only a trade and economic related forum as India’s precondition for the regional cooperation was to keep out from bilateral and security matters. South Asia has constantly also remained in conflicts due to religion, caste, ethnicity, border disputes since decades creating inappropriate background for integration. These can be reflected by the resentment in the provision of 6
bilateral agreements of the South Asian countries. This has intensified negative public attitudes especially towards India which has again led to indisposed commitment for regional integration. 4. Implication of SAPTA and SAFTA in Nepal It is expected that least developed countries like Nepal will benefit from the regional trade agreement like SAPTA and SAFTA. Nepal being unique in terms of historical, social, cultural and economic situation, the nature of trade seems uneven in the SAARC belt as it is a landlocked country. Figure 2 below shows average annual GDP growth rate of Nepal between 1980 and 2012. During 1980‐1989, growth rate was recorded to 4.5 percent, which declined to 4.12 percent during 1995‐2005. Again in the period 2005‐
2012, it reached to 4.5 percent. After 2005, there were drastic political changes in Nepal which included Comprehensive Peace Accord between the government and Maoist rebels followed by demolition of 240 years old monarchy. These political changes led to increased optimism in the country thereby contributing to an improved investment climate. As a result there was steady rise in the gross fixed capital formation. Figure 2: Annual average growth rates Source: UNCTAD, 2012 Table 3 depicts Nepal’s trade with the world. The total trade of Nepal has consistently increased in each successive period. Import share declined to 68.26 percent in 2000 from 75.29 percent in 1990. In 2010, imports heightened to 86.04 percent. Among the share of exports, it remained as high as 31.74 percent in 2000. Here, we can see that in each period gap of ten years, the share of imports has been greater than the share of exports implying huge trade deficit. The reason for increased import share is due to increased demand that was created by remittance which has been ever increasing due to large immigration in the country. The reason for low exports is very much due to lack of concrete policy, political instability, poor investment and rigid market structure. Table 3: Nepal trade with the world Year 1990 Import in Percent 75.29 29.7 Total trade (in billion RS) 2000 Export Import 24.71 68.26 174.03 7
2010 Export Import 31.74 86.04 436.56 Export 13.96 Table 4 depicts the status of Nepal’s trade with SAARC countries. The trade with SAARC countries has increased in each periodic year. In the region, Nepal’s trade is highly skewed with India. Of the total trade with SAARC, import share with India was 78.52 percent, 62.39 percent and 82.24 percent in 1990/91, 2000/01 and 2009/10 respectively. Similarly, export share with India was recorded to 17.18 percent, 35.92 percent and 15.31 percent in the years 1990/91, 2000/01 and 2009/10 respectively. Again, this shows that during the entire period, the share of imports were higher than exports confirming to huge trade deficit with India. Nepal borders India from three sides and it makes India the most important trading partner of Nepal. Besides India, Bangladesh is the second largest trading partner of Nepal in the SAARC region. Table 4: Nepal trade with SAARC countries, export and import in % Year 1990/91 2000/01 Country Import Export Import Export Afghanistan 0.169 0.000 0.000 0.000 Bangladesh 2.720 0.021 0.281 0.719 Bhutan 0.000 0.003 0.072 0.034 India 78.527 17.188 62.393 35.923 0.000200
Maldives 0 0 106 0 Pakistan 0.131 0.087 0.144 0.0289063 Sri Lanka 0.130 1.024 0.406 0.000011 Total Trade (in 000 Rs.) 9897694 72461600 Source: Nepal Trade and Export Promotion Centre, 2011 2009/10 Import 0.003 0.294 0.051 82.245 Export 0.000 1.295 0.597 15.317 0 0.108 0.021 0.00011 0.030 0.038 260514336 Table 5 exhibits Nepal’s trade balance with SAARC countries. From the year 2009 to 2013, Nepal suffered trade deficit with India and Pakistan. Likewise, in the case of Sri Lanka, Nepal it experienced trade deficit in all the years (2010‐2013) except in the year 2009. Trade deficit with India has been continuously increasing until 2012, except in 2013 when trade deficit has slightly declined. In case with Bangladesh and Bhutan, Nepal was having trade surplus in most of the period except in year 2013. Overall, Nepal have experienced trade deficit with SAARC countries in the entire period. In the year 2009, it was recorded to be US$ 1836 million and it reached to US$ 2039 million in 2013. Nepal has not been able to diversify trade with SAARC nations, except India, as expected. Currently, Nepal has relied mostly on remittance to maintain its huge trade deficit. However, such measures are not sustainable. Table 5: Nepal Trade balance with SAARC (in million US$) Year India Bangladesh Pakistan Bhutan 2009 ‐1884.8 43.9 ‐2.7 6.2 2010 ‐2678.9 47.8 ‐2.5 17.3 2011 ‐3132.5 6.6 ‐1.4 0.5 2012 ‐3638.7 17.7 ‐0.8 4.9 2013 ‐2037.5 ‐3.0 ‐1.2 ‐1.2 Source: Nepal Trade and Export Promotion Centre, 2014 8
Sri Lanka 0.7 ‐2.0 ‐0.7 ‐1.4 ‐0.7 Afghanistan ‐0.07 0.01 0.1 3.5 4.3 Maldives 0.02 0.0005 0.007 0.002 0.2 Trade is often regarded as a tool to attract FDI. There is general belief that FDI plays crucial role in accelerating economic growth in developing countries. However, the FDI flow in Nepal is highly unsatisfactory even compared to other South Asian countries and there is a need to attract large volume of export oriented FDI. 5. Issues for Nepal in Implementing Various Regional Cooperation and Trade Agreements Nepal’s balance of trade has been negative continuously for the last several years. The merchandise trade constitutes the largest part of foreign trade. With the objective of reducing long term trade deficit, Nepal adopted a new Trade Policy in 2009, but it has not succeeded to increase the export. Nepal’s trade has been lop sided with India, there by widening trade deficit. Nepal’s share in total world trade also has been waning as it holds small basket of exports and a few destination markets. According to Nepal Economic Survey 2012‐13, exports continued to decline over the years, reaching just over 12 percent of total foreign trade in the fiscal year 2012/13. The largest share of the country's imports so far this year is fuel, costing almost Rs 78 billion as contrast to the largest volume of carpet export which were just over Rs 4.4 billion. This has caused very high trade deficit. Nepal also suffers from street protests to bring down the oil prices, high rate of inflation. Total trade deficit during the first seven months of 2013/14 rose by 25.3 percent to Rs 339.81 billion, according to data released by Nepal Rastra Bank. Trade policy reform is required to relieve border constraints and improve investment opportunities because in spite of considerable renovation in customs administration, a lot of effort still lingers for improving drawbacks in duty, standards and quality, trade facilitation, transport and infrastructure, and FDI services. The current situation of Nepal pivots critically on improvement in financial and labor markets. Serious policy measure should be taken to straighten the burning issues Nepal is constantly facing. Minimizing imports must be a priority by way of setting up Industries that manufacture export‐oriented goods and services. Bringing in FDI should be promoted by giving incentives and making Nepal investment friendly destination, tourism should be promoted to reduce the imbalance. Nepal should also rationalize its sensitive list and reproach or negotiate the South Asian countries to do the same as all the countries in the regions include huge number of items in their sensitive list. 6. Concluding Remarks Unlike other regional groupings, SAARC region is highly dominated by a single country. India is the largest country in the region, not only in terms of geographical territory and population, but also in terms of resources and hence naturally dominates South Asia’s trade. India is now third largest economy of the world. Its GNP is 8 times more than that of Pakistan, which is the second biggest economy in South Asia. Likewise India is the only country in South Asia which has common borders with all the nations except Afghanistan. In view of this, regional cooperation in South Asia will not succeed without India's active participation and sincere political commitments. The current layout of transit in South Asia is bilateral where India provides overland transit to Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan for their bilateral trade, and maritime transit to Nepal and Bhutan for its international trade. Land borders in South Asia are overcrowded. High trade cost, persistent border hassles and corruption is existent especially for Nepal and Bhutan. Lack of adequate regional cooperation has lead to uneconomical trade routes raising trade costs and time delays. As a result, 9
landlocked countries are left behind their maritime neighbors in overall development and external trade. Majority South Asian countries bear very high customs and port clearance, poor communication and transportation and regulatory constraints at the borders. Reducing trade costs and facilitating transit are the keys for more integrated economy. The potential benefit of regional cooperation is in making the best of existing border infrastructure and developing new connectivity infrastructure. The status of trade facilitation in South Asia is quite low. Trade facilitation variables have major impacts on exports. By improving trade facilitation trade flows can be significantly increased. Along with promoting greater political and economic integration among neighboring countries and tackling shared resource management issues, trade facilitation measures, simplification of customs process to boost intraregional trade should be insinuated with priority. Common SAARC sensitive list have to be developed beyond SAFTA. This common sensitive list would protect the intra‐ SAARC market, boost trade and trade diversification and also have to be able to face the global competitiveness. Effective technical support and cooperation have to ensure for enhancing the regional as well as global trade and to build up LDCs capacity in case of global competitiveness. The area of technical cooperation will be as infrastructure development, regional connectivity and transit to land‐locked SAARC member countries, technology transfer, ICT and inter‐regional financing and investment. These arrangements would further facilitate the movements of goods and people in the process of fostering regional integration. South Asian regional integration is critical to development of mutual trust, social cohesion and shared cultures. It is hence essential that public policy be prearranged so as to ascertain sustained commitment among border countries and to ensure efficient coordination of activities leading to positive and sustainable outcomes. Bibliography Ahmed, S and G. Ghani (2007). South Asia’s Growth of Regional Integration: An Overview, World Bank A Blog of Asian Development Bank Institute. (2013, August 27). Economic Integration and Trade Liberalization in South Asia. Retrieved April 2014, from www.asiapathways‐adbi.org Bhattaicharya, B. N. (2012). Benefits and Challenges of Integrating South and Southeast Asia. CES ifo, Working Paper No. 3819, 1‐33. Nepal Rastra Bank. (2005). Prospects and Endeavours of Intra‐Regional Trade and Investment in South Asia. In B. Sigdel, & H. P. Neupane, Economic Integration in South Asia (pp. 59‐81). Kathmandu: Nepal Rastra Bank. Nepal Rastra Bank. (2005). SAPTA and SAFTA: Implications for Nepal. In D. B. Kshetry, Economic Integration in South Asia (pp. 24‐29). Nepal Rastra Bank. Nepal Rastra Bank. (2005). The Proliferation of RTAs with Special Reference to South Asia. In B. Pant, Economic Integration in South Asia (pp. 82‐92). Nepal Rastra Bank. 10
SAARC Document Center. (2014). Statistics. Retrieved April 2014, from www.sdc.gov.in SAWTEE. (2007, November). Research Briefs. Retrieved April 2014, from South Asian Watch on Trade Economics and Environment: www.sawtee.org South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation. (1987). Dhaka Declaration. Retrieved April 2014, from South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation: www.saarc‐sic.org South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation. (1993). SAARC Preferential Trading Arrangment (SAPTA). Retrieved April 2014, from www.saarc‐sic.org South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation. (2004). South Asian Free Trade Area (SAFTA). Retrieved April 2014, from www.saarc‐sic.org Suhail, P., & Sreejesh. (2011). The bilateral trade agreements and export performance of South Asian nations with special reference to India Sri Lanka Free Trade Agreement. The Romanian Economic Journal, 115‐130. United Nation Conference on Trade and Development. (2014). UNCTAD Stat. Retrieved April 2014, from www.unctad.org World Bank (2005). Trade and Transit Facilitation in South Asia: Overview of South Asia Trade
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