IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ris/adbrei/0078.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Trade and Investment in the Greater Mekong Subregion: Remaining Challenges and the Unfinished Policy Agenda

Author

Listed:

Abstract

The Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) is one of the most successful stories of economic transition and integration among developing countries. Strong rates of economic growth since the early 1990s have been fueled by increased trade and foreign direct investment (FDI) in the subregion. This economic progress has translated into marked improvements in living standards and human development outcomes, and dramatic reductions in poverty. Unilateral policy reforms and greater economic cooperation through the GMS Program in particular have led to positive trade and investment growth. More recently, membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO) and participation in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Free Trade Agreement (AFTA) and other preferential trading agreements have driven reforms. Despite these achievements, the trade policy reform agenda remains incomplete. It is important for the GMS members of AFTA to multilateralize their preferences in order to avoid trade diversion and deflection, and remain open to global trade. This should also be the objective of the various ASEAN+1 bilateral free trade agreements (FTAs). Retaining a multiple-tier tariff system is unlikely to mitigate revenue loss, but could unnecessarily burden an already stretched bureaucracy, or lead to more rent-seeking. In order to reduce vulnerability to external shocks, diversification of both export commodities and markets are being considered. Intra-sectoral diversification of export commodities is likely to be more viable and less costly than inter-sectoral diversification. It is unlikely, however, that any rebalancing of growth from foreign to domestic demand would be required in the GMS countries in order to increase resilience to external shocks.

Suggested Citation

  • Menon, Jayant & Melendez, Anna Cassandra, 2011. "Trade and Investment in the Greater Mekong Subregion: Remaining Challenges and the Unfinished Policy Agenda," Working Papers on Regional Economic Integration 78, Asian Development Bank.
  • Handle: RePEc:ris:adbrei:0078
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://aric.adb.org/pdf/workingpaper/WP78_Menon_Melendez_Trade_and_Investment_in_the_GMS.pdf
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Hamanaka, Shintaro, 2013. "A note on detecting biases in assessing the use of FTAs," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(C), pages 24-32.
    2. Peerapeng, Suk-Rutai & Chaitip, Prasert & Chaiboonsri, Chukiat & Kovacs, Sandor & Balogh, Peter, 2013. "Impact Of Economic Globalization On The Human Trafficking In The Greater Mekong Sub-Region Countries," APSTRACT: Applied Studies in Agribusiness and Commerce, AGRIMBA, vol. 6(5), pages 1-8, April.
    3. Richard Pomfret, 2013. "ASEAN's New Frontiers: Integrating the Newest Members into the ASEAN Economic Community," Asian Economic Policy Review, Japan Center for Economic Research, vol. 8(1), pages 25-41, June.
    4. Teerawat Charoenrat & Piriya Pholphirul, 2022. "The Industrial Sector Participation in Global Value Chains for Sustainable Development of the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS)," Global Business Review, International Management Institute, vol. 23(3), pages 608-640, June.
    5. Hal Hill & Jayant Menon, 2011. "Reducing Vulnerability in Transition Economies: Crises and Adjustment in Cambodia," Departmental Working Papers 2011-08, The Australian National University, Arndt-Corden Department of Economics.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS); Cambodia; the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Lao PDR); Myanmar; Thailand; Viet Nam; trade and investment; regional economic integration; regional trade agreements; economic diversification;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F15 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Economic Integration
    • F59 - International Economics - - International Relations, National Security, and International Political Economy - - - Other
    • O53 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies - - - Asia including Middle East

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:ris:adbrei:0078. 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: Ivan B. de Leon (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/oradbph.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.