Intra-Saarc Trade: A Dwindling Feature

Most of the South Asian countries, namely Bangladesh, Bhutan,1 India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka formed a loose association SARC (South Asian Regional Cooperation) in the year 1980. Through various meetings and conferences spread over five years under the banner of SARC, an agreement was signed in December 1985 for the formation of SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation. SAARC member-countries have chosen some areas of cooperation like, agriculture, rural development, meteorology, telecommunication, scientific and technical cooperation, health and cooperation activities, transport, postal services and sports, arts and culture. The most recent development that has taken place concerns the meeting of Group of Planners on a yearly basis to review the studies made under the aegis of SAARC in the following areas2 (i) Analysis of trade regimes vis-a-vis industrial protection policies of member countries; (ii) Quantification of the benefits of intra-regional trade expansion including transit problems of land-locked countries and mechanism for financing short duration trade imbalances; (iii) Studies to explore the possibilities of joint ventures in agriculture, industry and energy; and (iv) Studies of existing national systems of industrial promotion and regulation including assessment of design and consultancy capabilities and post-harvest technologies. Inspite of these, the subject of cooperation for intra-regional trade expansion still remains outside the SAARC programme. There is little cooperation in the SAARC region in the sphere of trade. Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka (among other Asian countries) are signatories to the Bangkok Agreement under which each member country gives certain preferential treatment to the co-signatories in the field of trade. This Preferential Trade Agreement signed in July 1975, under the auspicies of ESCAP covered multilateral trade cooperation but has made very limited impact on expanding intra-regional trade among the three countries listed above. Apart from this, the SAARC countries are the members of Asian Clearing Union (ACU), set up in 1975, with a limited coverage of membership, transactions and credit facilities in this region. In spite of SAARC countries' participation in two major schemes of multilateral trade cooperation, the region lagged behind the rest of the world in expanding their trade. Over a period of time, the share of intra-regional trade in this region declined in comparison to world trade. The fall in the share of infra-regional trade can also be seen in a relative sense. Thus, the dependence of these countries upon developed countries has increased and foreign trade has failed to act as an engine of growth in this region. The aim of this paper is to examine: (i) Declining export and import growth rates of SAARC countries; (ii) SAARC countries' aggregate exports and imports share in world exports and imports and its burgeoning trade balances', and (iii) Intra-regional exports and imports share of SAARC countries and SAARC share in its total exports and imports to the rest of the world.