Author
Abstract
The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) is the most integrated association in the South Asian region. Over the past four decades, the countries achieved some progress in liberalizing mutual trade by reducing customs duty rates. But centrifugal factors, such as differentiation by levels of economic development, low level of interdependence and complementarity, political disagreements, frequent civil conflicts and riots (as in Sri Lanka in April 2022) have a negative impact. The purpose of the study is to analyze evolution of the integration processes in South Asia and the results achieved, as well as their influence on the changes in mutual trade within SAARC. The state, problems and prospects for Russia’s trade with the SAARC countries are considered, with the changes after February 24, 2022. In general, SAARC has moved from a preferential trade zone to a free trade zone. The latter (in case of full implementation of the set goals and objectives in the relevant agreements) will cover goods, services and investments. The concept of transition to a deeper stage of integration – the South Asian Economic Union - is proposed. So far, a low level of economic interdependence remains (the share of mutual exports in total exports is 7.0 %) and there are many contradictions between the participating countries.
Suggested Citation
Galina Mikhailovna KOSTYUNINA, 2022.
"The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC): Integration Trends and Trade with Russia,"
Russian Foreign Economic Journal, Russian Foreign Trade Academy Ministry of economic development of the Russian Federation, issue 10, pages 38-53, October.
Handle:
RePEc:alq:rufejo:rfej_2022_10_38-53
DOI: 10.24412/2072-8042-2022-10-38-53
Download full text from publisher
Corrections
All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:alq:rufejo:rfej_2022_10_38-53. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.
If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.
We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .
If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Irina Katolik (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vavtmru.html .
Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through
the various RePEc services.