Industrial cooperation in South Asia : opportunities and strategies in selected products

The international economic environment is becoming increasingly competitive and multipolarised. To help enhance their capabilities to face the emerging challenges in the international economy, many countries in Europe, South-East Asia, North America and those around the Pacific are extending and deepening the existing regional trading arrangements and contemplating new ones. The South Asian countries have also recently agreed to promote regional economic and trade cooperation under the framework of SAARC and the South Asian Preferential Trade Agreement (SAPTA). The leaders of these countries have recognised that in the emerging global economic environment such regional cooperation has become a necessity.

This book contains articles which explore the prospects, constraints and strategies for promoting mutually beneficial economic and institutional cooperation among the South Asian countries and generating cooperative and collaborative development in selected industrial product groups. These articles are condensed versions of detailed studies undertaken by several South Asian scholars during 1992 and 1993. They are based on the analysis of demand-supply and related economic trends and projections in selected product groups in Bangladesh, Nepal, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. They explore the areas of cooperation in terms of freer intra-regional trade, joint ventures and other forms of institutional and technological cooperation in the context of developments in national, regional and third-country markets. As these articles provide useful insights into specific areas of cooperation, this book will be of valuable interest to policy makers, industrialists and businessmen, and students of international economic relations.