Source: The Financial Express

By SANJAY JOG

MUMBAI, MAR 29: Trade within South Asia can be more than doubled if appropriate regional agreements on roads, rail, air, and shipping are put in place. A comprehensive report prepared by the World Bank ahead of the Saarc Heads of State Summit in New Delhi on April 3 to 4 has suggested that the instrumentality of South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc) be deployed not in promoting South Asia Free Trade Agreement (Safta) but project by project cooperation in areas of mutual interest. Projects in areas of infrastructure, energy and trade facilitation are good candidates for such cooperation.

In so far as preferential trading is concerned, its goal should be an Asia-wide trade block for which the best starting point is an India-China FTA. These are growing economies and together reasonably large. Because of the highly competitive nature of China's firms in many products on the worldwide scale, risks of trade diversion for India are much lower than in Safta.

Full story...

Posted by pichu at March 30, 2007 12:01 PM