Speaker Profile: Dr Nitya Nanda

Nitya Nanda is a Fellow with the Centre for Global Agreements, Legislation and Trade, The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), New Delhi. Earlier he worked with CUTS International, National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) and Council for Social Development. An economist by training, he had his education at the University of Calcutta and Jawaharlal Nehru University. Nitya has about fifteen years of experience in research and consultancy in the areas of trade, investment, competition policy, energy and environment issues. Nitya has several publications on these issues in national and international journals and edited volumes, and authored a book titled, “Expanding Frontiers of Global Trade Rules: The Political Economy Dynamics of the International Trading System”, Routledge, London.

ABSTRACT

Regional Economic Integration and SAFTA: What Does it Portend?

After 10 years of the formation SAARC, the member states in the region introduced SAPTA in 1995 with the primary objective to promote and sustain mutual trade and economic co-operation among the member countries. However, the initiative met with limited success. Reasons include limited tariff reductions, barriers present in trade agreements, prevalence of sizeable informal trade and weak governance and political frictions. Another contentious issue in the region pertaining to trade is the current imbalance between India and some of the regional partners. The sheer size of India and its economic policies, with huge diversification have resulted in restricted complementarities with reduced trade opportunities. Given this context, even SAFTA cannot achieve much in terms of enhancing the share of intra-regional trade in total trade in South Asia. However, it must be noted that the share of intra-regional trade need not be viewed as the only measure of trade integration ignoring the size distribution of countries in the region. It must also be noted that trade integration is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for promoting regional peace and cooperation.