While India has gradually embraced a unilateral liberal policy on the limit of inward foreign inv... more While India has gradually embraced a unilateral liberal policy on the limit of inward foreign investment in the country, its negotiating position on the same at the multilateral forum, i.e., WTO, is still comparatively defensive. The key question raised by the current analysis is, whether India is right to adopt a hard negotiating stand at WTO on investment issues, covered under GATS Mode 3 and Trade and Investment Negotiations. An associated concern is whether a softening of India’s present standpoint is expected in coming future. For this purpose, the current study explores the long-run co-integrating relationship between India’s FDI and economic growth, in addition to exploring their direction of causality applying Granger causality test. The obtained empirical results lead to the following observations. First, regarding the question of the justifiability of the Indian standpoint, it is observed that though foreign investment inflow in the country continues to benefit several sec...
Deeper trade integration in East and Southeast Asia has contributed significantly in development ... more Deeper trade integration in East and Southeast Asia has contributed significantly in development of international production networks (IPN) in several key manufacturing products in the region. To secure a much wider Asia-Pacific trade integration, negotiations for the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), involving six bilateral RTA partners of ASEAN, namely—Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea has been launched from 2013, with ASEAN at the core. The other mega-FTA, Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) also involves a number of RCEP countries. The current analysis intends to compare the possible benefits for India through its association with RCEP and possible joining of TPP, with the help of select trade indices. The data revels that while from a pure trade balance perspective TPP offers India a better prospect, gains are expected in several RCEP countries in terms of trade complementarity, trade intensity and production integration dynamics. Because of geographical proximity, a number of RCEP countries have been able to deepen their presence in the Indian market and integrate with the value chains. It is expected that appropriate trade facilitation reforms, followed by conclusion of RCEP negotiations, would deepen intra-bloc trade flows further. The results reveal that RCEP holds an edge over TPP in India’s preference ordering on the basis of merchandise trade patterns. It is therefore concluded that India needs to focus on RCEP negotiations, at least in short run, before it can pitch for a TPP membership later, in line with its economic interests.
Since the inception of the WTO in 1995, India enthusiastically explored export-promotion strategi... more Since the inception of the WTO in 1995, India enthusiastically explored export-promotion strategies through multilateral trade reforms. However, the country has moved towards the regional trade route since 2004, primarily owing to the slow progress of the Doha Round negotiations. As a result, the whole architecture of international trade law and governance is being redesigned in the Asia Pacific region. This paper focuses on the pivotal role played by India in this rebalancing. Given the stress on services exports and investment requirements, India focused on entering into comprehensive agreements encompassing merchandise and services trade as well as investment provisions. Presently, India is involved in the ongoing Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership [RCEP] negotiations, where ASEAN remains at the core. The current analysis evaluates the Indo-ASEAN trade patterns and evolving dynamics over the last decade through select trade indices, and comments on the future of the RCEP.
After initiating the economic liberalization policies in 1991, India adopted a 'Look East Pol... more After initiating the economic liberalization policies in 1991, India adopted a 'Look East Policy' (LEP) with the dual objective of securing economic growth and maintaining maritime security. Cooperation with East Asia received further boost, when the 'Act East Policy' (AEP) came into effect during the maiden visit of Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi at the ASEAN-India Summit in 2014, which emphasizes on practicing more action-oriented policy towards ASEAN and the wider East Asia. As a result of the policy shift and through the other initiatives like Make-in-India, India's trade and investment linkages with East Asia is on the rise. In 2015, the Prime Minister visited five East Asian countries at various occasions. There have been other high level diplomatic visits to the East, followed by the appropriate diplomatic channels. Therefore, AEP has brought a great sense of speed and priority in engaging with the East and Southeast Asian countries. On maritime front, C...
With inception of a comprehensive WTO framework in 1995, while the tariff barriers across Member ... more With inception of a comprehensive WTO framework in 1995, while the tariff barriers across Member countries have declined, several procedural and policy-related hassles still continue to obstruct trade flows. To reduce the procedural hassles to export and import flows, from the Cancun Ministerial (2003) onwards, negotiations to reach an agreement on Trade Facilitation (TF) started, which was finally concluded at the Bali Ministerial (2013) meeting of the WTO. The current analysis explores the relationship between TF measures, as reflected from the World Bank Logistics Performance Index (LPI),and export orientation (export as percentage of GDP) during four years, namely 2007, 2010, 2012 and 2014. The empirical results underline the difference in the influence of TF on export orientation in higher-income and lower-income countries. It is concluded that there is need to continue the "Aid-for-Trade" support measures to lower-income economies, for improving their TF scenario.
... While Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and Thailand became part of this grouping in 199... more ... While Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and Thailand became part of this grouping in 1997, Nepal and Bhutan joined it in February 2004. The first summit ... India also provides preferential treatment to exports coming from Bhutan and Nepal. ...
With inception of a comprehensive WTO framework in 1995, while the tariff barriers across Member ... more With inception of a comprehensive WTO framework in 1995, while the tariff barriers across Member countries have declined, several procedural and policy-related hassles still continue to obstruct trade flows. To reduce the procedural hassles to export and import flows, from the Cancun Ministerial (2003) onwards, negotiations to reach an agreement on Trade Facilitation (TF) started, which was finally concluded at the Bali Ministerial (2013) meeting of the WTO. The current analysis explores the relationship between TF measures, as reflected from the World Bank Logistics Performance Index (LPI), and export orientation (export as percentage of GDP) during four years, namely 2007, 2010, 2012 and 2014. The empirical results underline the difference in the influence of TF on export orientation in higher-income and lower-income countries. It is concluded that there is need to continue the ‘Aid-for-Trade’ support measures to lower-income economies, for improving their TF scenario.
With advent of economic growth, rapid urbanization has led to a consequent rise in demand for wat... more With advent of economic growth, rapid urbanization has led to a consequent rise in demand for water supply and sanitation (WSS) services. The growth rate of urban population is quite high in regions characterized by low and middle-income, namely, Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, Middle East and North Africa, East Asia and the Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean. Given the poor access to WSS across several regions, the present analysis attempts to estimate the demand for investment in this sector. The empirical estimates reveals that to achieve universal access to improved WSS by 2019, the stock of investment in water services should reach US $2,240 billion at 2005 prices in 2019. At the given stock of investment in 2012, an additional investment of US$ 590 billion (US$ 134 billion in water supply and US$ 456 billion in sanitation) would be required in new water services infrastructure to reach the desired stock of investment by 2019. Given the high investment requirements in low...
The positive influence of subsidies on merchandise exports is well known from trade theory litera... more The positive influence of subsidies on merchandise exports is well known from trade theory literature. However, the empirical evidence on the relationship remains ambiguous. The current study conducts a panel data empirical analysis over 1990–2011 for 140 countries to understand the relationship between their overall budgetary subsidies and aggregate merchandise export inclination. The empirical results of this article lead to three major findings. Firstly, overall budgetary supports in all countries, irrespective of their income level, are positively related with aggregate merchandise export expressed as percentage of GDP. However, the low-income countries witness lesser success vis-a-vis their developed counterparts. Secondly, merchandise imports, FDI inward movement and contribution of the industrial sector in the economy positively influence merchandise export inclination, which partially explains the former result. Thirdly, the importance of government budgetary subsidy reporti...
In 1991 as par the recommendations of the IMF, India followed a structural adjustment programme. ... more In 1991 as par the recommendations of the IMF, India followed a structural adjustment programme. The new economic philosophy shifted towards export-oriented growth model, where augmenting competition in the domestic market through reforms in licensing provisions and adoption of better technological capabilities through FDI collaborations have played an extremely important role. Over the last decade, the high economic growth in India resulting from the reforms has motivated massive FDI inflow in the country. The continuous inflow has caused India’s share in global FDI inward stock to increase from 0.08 percent in 1990 to 0.22 percent and 1.03 percent in 2000 and 2010 respectively. However, the improved FDI scenario in India has simultaneously witnessed a decline in the current account balance (CAB) of the country. In this background, the current paper attempts to explore the underlying long term co-integrated relationship between FDI inflow in India and CAB by analyzing quarterly dat...
The inception of World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995 was expected to reduce trade barriers acr... more The inception of World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995 was expected to reduce trade barriers across member countries on one hand and facilitate growth though promotion of international trade in merchandise products and services on the other. The subsequent WTO-led reforms deepened the globalization wave. In recent times however, the world is witnessing a phase of ‘de-globalization’, with rise in trade barriers and inwardness. The recent increase in US tariffs on Chinese exports and countermeasures imposed by China are a case in point. In 2014 India has initiated the Make-in-India scheme for deepening industrialization and facilitating exports. The current paper evaluates the possible opportunities for expanding Indian pharmaceutical exports in the US market, given the increase in tariff against Chinese products with the help of select trade indices. The analysis portrays a modest opportunity for Indian pharmaceutical exports in the US market, based on their past performance. Only s...
It has been observed that a number of developed as well as developing countries provide subsidies... more It has been observed that a number of developed as well as developing countries provide subsidies to their resource-intensive sectors like agriculture, fisheries, manufacturing etc. However, overproduction and consequent pollution as well as overexploitation of natural resources resulting from the provision of input and output subsidies have been a serious threat to environmental sustainability. An area of concern is that subsidies with potentially harmful environmental impacts are not declining in the recent period, despite the ongoing negotiations through the WTO framework and the UN forums. The present analysis attempts to understand the role of government budgetary subsidies on the overall environmental performance through panel data model estimation for a set of seventy four countries over an eleven year period (2000-2010). The empirical findings confirm that a positive relationship between subsidies and environmental degradation exists in a cross-country framework. The analysi...
After independence, for four decades, India relied on the development supports from the ‘West’, b... more After independence, for four decades, India relied on the development supports from the ‘West’, both from the West European countries and the United States as well as from the Soviet Union. While interaction with the Southeast and East Asian economies continued in international forums like the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), a long-term strategic partnership was missing for various reasons. After initiating the economic liberalization policies in 1991, the country adopted a ‘Look East Policy’ (LEP) with a two-track approach in mind. While on one hand, Japan, Singapore and South Korea were considered as source of technology and investment, high growth rate in several economies of East and Southeast Asia was instrumental in considering them as high potential export markets. India subsequently strengthened the ties with the ‘East’ by becoming Sectoral Dialogue Partner of ASEAN in 1992, covering trade, tourism, investment and science and technology. India’s ‘Act East Policy’ (AEP) came into...
While India has gradually embraced a unilateral liberal policy on the limit of inward foreign inv... more While India has gradually embraced a unilateral liberal policy on the limit of inward foreign investment in the country, its negotiating position on the same at the multilateral forum, i.e., WTO, is still comparatively defensive. The key question raised by the current analysis is, whether India is right to adopt a hard negotiating stand at WTO on investment issues, covered under GATS Mode 3 and Trade and Investment Negotiations. An associated concern is whether a softening of India’s present standpoint is expected in coming future. For this purpose, the current study explores the long-run co-integrating relationship between India’s FDI and economic growth, in addition to exploring their direction of causality applying Granger causality test. The obtained empirical results lead to the following observations. First, regarding the question of the justifiability of the Indian standpoint, it is observed that though foreign investment inflow in the country continues to benefit several sec...
Deeper trade integration in East and Southeast Asia has contributed significantly in development ... more Deeper trade integration in East and Southeast Asia has contributed significantly in development of international production networks (IPN) in several key manufacturing products in the region. To secure a much wider Asia-Pacific trade integration, negotiations for the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), involving six bilateral RTA partners of ASEAN, namely—Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea has been launched from 2013, with ASEAN at the core. The other mega-FTA, Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) also involves a number of RCEP countries. The current analysis intends to compare the possible benefits for India through its association with RCEP and possible joining of TPP, with the help of select trade indices. The data revels that while from a pure trade balance perspective TPP offers India a better prospect, gains are expected in several RCEP countries in terms of trade complementarity, trade intensity and production integration dynamics. Because of geographical proximity, a number of RCEP countries have been able to deepen their presence in the Indian market and integrate with the value chains. It is expected that appropriate trade facilitation reforms, followed by conclusion of RCEP negotiations, would deepen intra-bloc trade flows further. The results reveal that RCEP holds an edge over TPP in India’s preference ordering on the basis of merchandise trade patterns. It is therefore concluded that India needs to focus on RCEP negotiations, at least in short run, before it can pitch for a TPP membership later, in line with its economic interests.
Since the inception of the WTO in 1995, India enthusiastically explored export-promotion strategi... more Since the inception of the WTO in 1995, India enthusiastically explored export-promotion strategies through multilateral trade reforms. However, the country has moved towards the regional trade route since 2004, primarily owing to the slow progress of the Doha Round negotiations. As a result, the whole architecture of international trade law and governance is being redesigned in the Asia Pacific region. This paper focuses on the pivotal role played by India in this rebalancing. Given the stress on services exports and investment requirements, India focused on entering into comprehensive agreements encompassing merchandise and services trade as well as investment provisions. Presently, India is involved in the ongoing Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership [RCEP] negotiations, where ASEAN remains at the core. The current analysis evaluates the Indo-ASEAN trade patterns and evolving dynamics over the last decade through select trade indices, and comments on the future of the RCEP.
After initiating the economic liberalization policies in 1991, India adopted a 'Look East Pol... more After initiating the economic liberalization policies in 1991, India adopted a 'Look East Policy' (LEP) with the dual objective of securing economic growth and maintaining maritime security. Cooperation with East Asia received further boost, when the 'Act East Policy' (AEP) came into effect during the maiden visit of Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi at the ASEAN-India Summit in 2014, which emphasizes on practicing more action-oriented policy towards ASEAN and the wider East Asia. As a result of the policy shift and through the other initiatives like Make-in-India, India's trade and investment linkages with East Asia is on the rise. In 2015, the Prime Minister visited five East Asian countries at various occasions. There have been other high level diplomatic visits to the East, followed by the appropriate diplomatic channels. Therefore, AEP has brought a great sense of speed and priority in engaging with the East and Southeast Asian countries. On maritime front, C...
With inception of a comprehensive WTO framework in 1995, while the tariff barriers across Member ... more With inception of a comprehensive WTO framework in 1995, while the tariff barriers across Member countries have declined, several procedural and policy-related hassles still continue to obstruct trade flows. To reduce the procedural hassles to export and import flows, from the Cancun Ministerial (2003) onwards, negotiations to reach an agreement on Trade Facilitation (TF) started, which was finally concluded at the Bali Ministerial (2013) meeting of the WTO. The current analysis explores the relationship between TF measures, as reflected from the World Bank Logistics Performance Index (LPI),and export orientation (export as percentage of GDP) during four years, namely 2007, 2010, 2012 and 2014. The empirical results underline the difference in the influence of TF on export orientation in higher-income and lower-income countries. It is concluded that there is need to continue the "Aid-for-Trade" support measures to lower-income economies, for improving their TF scenario.
... While Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and Thailand became part of this grouping in 199... more ... While Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and Thailand became part of this grouping in 1997, Nepal and Bhutan joined it in February 2004. The first summit ... India also provides preferential treatment to exports coming from Bhutan and Nepal. ...
With inception of a comprehensive WTO framework in 1995, while the tariff barriers across Member ... more With inception of a comprehensive WTO framework in 1995, while the tariff barriers across Member countries have declined, several procedural and policy-related hassles still continue to obstruct trade flows. To reduce the procedural hassles to export and import flows, from the Cancun Ministerial (2003) onwards, negotiations to reach an agreement on Trade Facilitation (TF) started, which was finally concluded at the Bali Ministerial (2013) meeting of the WTO. The current analysis explores the relationship between TF measures, as reflected from the World Bank Logistics Performance Index (LPI), and export orientation (export as percentage of GDP) during four years, namely 2007, 2010, 2012 and 2014. The empirical results underline the difference in the influence of TF on export orientation in higher-income and lower-income countries. It is concluded that there is need to continue the ‘Aid-for-Trade’ support measures to lower-income economies, for improving their TF scenario.
With advent of economic growth, rapid urbanization has led to a consequent rise in demand for wat... more With advent of economic growth, rapid urbanization has led to a consequent rise in demand for water supply and sanitation (WSS) services. The growth rate of urban population is quite high in regions characterized by low and middle-income, namely, Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, Middle East and North Africa, East Asia and the Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean. Given the poor access to WSS across several regions, the present analysis attempts to estimate the demand for investment in this sector. The empirical estimates reveals that to achieve universal access to improved WSS by 2019, the stock of investment in water services should reach US $2,240 billion at 2005 prices in 2019. At the given stock of investment in 2012, an additional investment of US$ 590 billion (US$ 134 billion in water supply and US$ 456 billion in sanitation) would be required in new water services infrastructure to reach the desired stock of investment by 2019. Given the high investment requirements in low...
The positive influence of subsidies on merchandise exports is well known from trade theory litera... more The positive influence of subsidies on merchandise exports is well known from trade theory literature. However, the empirical evidence on the relationship remains ambiguous. The current study conducts a panel data empirical analysis over 1990–2011 for 140 countries to understand the relationship between their overall budgetary subsidies and aggregate merchandise export inclination. The empirical results of this article lead to three major findings. Firstly, overall budgetary supports in all countries, irrespective of their income level, are positively related with aggregate merchandise export expressed as percentage of GDP. However, the low-income countries witness lesser success vis-a-vis their developed counterparts. Secondly, merchandise imports, FDI inward movement and contribution of the industrial sector in the economy positively influence merchandise export inclination, which partially explains the former result. Thirdly, the importance of government budgetary subsidy reporti...
In 1991 as par the recommendations of the IMF, India followed a structural adjustment programme. ... more In 1991 as par the recommendations of the IMF, India followed a structural adjustment programme. The new economic philosophy shifted towards export-oriented growth model, where augmenting competition in the domestic market through reforms in licensing provisions and adoption of better technological capabilities through FDI collaborations have played an extremely important role. Over the last decade, the high economic growth in India resulting from the reforms has motivated massive FDI inflow in the country. The continuous inflow has caused India’s share in global FDI inward stock to increase from 0.08 percent in 1990 to 0.22 percent and 1.03 percent in 2000 and 2010 respectively. However, the improved FDI scenario in India has simultaneously witnessed a decline in the current account balance (CAB) of the country. In this background, the current paper attempts to explore the underlying long term co-integrated relationship between FDI inflow in India and CAB by analyzing quarterly dat...
The inception of World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995 was expected to reduce trade barriers acr... more The inception of World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995 was expected to reduce trade barriers across member countries on one hand and facilitate growth though promotion of international trade in merchandise products and services on the other. The subsequent WTO-led reforms deepened the globalization wave. In recent times however, the world is witnessing a phase of ‘de-globalization’, with rise in trade barriers and inwardness. The recent increase in US tariffs on Chinese exports and countermeasures imposed by China are a case in point. In 2014 India has initiated the Make-in-India scheme for deepening industrialization and facilitating exports. The current paper evaluates the possible opportunities for expanding Indian pharmaceutical exports in the US market, given the increase in tariff against Chinese products with the help of select trade indices. The analysis portrays a modest opportunity for Indian pharmaceutical exports in the US market, based on their past performance. Only s...
It has been observed that a number of developed as well as developing countries provide subsidies... more It has been observed that a number of developed as well as developing countries provide subsidies to their resource-intensive sectors like agriculture, fisheries, manufacturing etc. However, overproduction and consequent pollution as well as overexploitation of natural resources resulting from the provision of input and output subsidies have been a serious threat to environmental sustainability. An area of concern is that subsidies with potentially harmful environmental impacts are not declining in the recent period, despite the ongoing negotiations through the WTO framework and the UN forums. The present analysis attempts to understand the role of government budgetary subsidies on the overall environmental performance through panel data model estimation for a set of seventy four countries over an eleven year period (2000-2010). The empirical findings confirm that a positive relationship between subsidies and environmental degradation exists in a cross-country framework. The analysi...
After independence, for four decades, India relied on the development supports from the ‘West’, b... more After independence, for four decades, India relied on the development supports from the ‘West’, both from the West European countries and the United States as well as from the Soviet Union. While interaction with the Southeast and East Asian economies continued in international forums like the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), a long-term strategic partnership was missing for various reasons. After initiating the economic liberalization policies in 1991, the country adopted a ‘Look East Policy’ (LEP) with a two-track approach in mind. While on one hand, Japan, Singapore and South Korea were considered as source of technology and investment, high growth rate in several economies of East and Southeast Asia was instrumental in considering them as high potential export markets. India subsequently strengthened the ties with the ‘East’ by becoming Sectoral Dialogue Partner of ASEAN in 1992, covering trade, tourism, investment and science and technology. India’s ‘Act East Policy’ (AEP) came into...
The economies located in East, South and Southeast Asia have witnessed an interesting growth-sust... more The economies located in East, South and Southeast Asia have witnessed an interesting growth-sustainability trade-off over the last decades. While growth considerations have paved ways for deepened ties with growing trade-investment waves and increasing population pressure necessitated exploitation of hitherto unutilized natural resources, focus on environmental sustainability has been a recent consideration. The growth impetus still playing a key role in these economies, it becomes imperative that the countries effectively address the key sustainability concerns, e.g. air and water pollution, land degradation, loss of biodiversity, climate change issues like CO2 emissions etc. But how prepared is the governance mechanism of these countries, covering not only the legislative and administrative framework but also involvement of the judiciary, presence of spirited civil society and active engagement of stakeholders in policy-framing dialogues, to rise up to these challenges? The edited book seeks an answer to this question through the environmental governance mechanism and natural resource conservation policies in three vibrant regions within Asia. A holistic development dimension of sustainable development path emerges, through discussion of policies adopted by developed (Japan, South Korea), upper-middle (China, Malaysia), developing (India, Indonesia, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand) and least developed countries (Bangladesh, Myanmar, Nepal). The analysis presented in the 12 chapters of this edited volume shows an interesting evolution in the environmental governance scenario across the East, South and Southeast Asian countries. The economic growth cycle witnessed by the Asian countries enables one to understand the environmental policymaking in a larger perspective.
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Papers by Debashis Chakraborty
The edited book seeks an answer to this question through the environmental governance mechanism and natural resource conservation policies in three vibrant regions within Asia. A holistic development dimension of sustainable development path emerges, through discussion of policies adopted by developed (Japan, South Korea), upper-middle (China, Malaysia), developing (India, Indonesia, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand) and least developed countries (Bangladesh, Myanmar, Nepal). The analysis presented in the 12 chapters of this edited volume shows an interesting evolution in the environmental governance scenario across the East, South and Southeast Asian countries. The economic growth cycle witnessed by the Asian countries enables one to understand the environmental policymaking in a larger perspective.