Economic Cooperation And Integration Among BIMSTEC: A Study On Organic Agricultural Products

Abstract

The study on the economic benefits of India BIMSTEC sub-regional trade alignments for Indian organic products focuses on regional alliances among south and southeast Asia. This sub-regional trading bloc is most important for Indian policymakers to enhance economic cooperation through trade on organic Agri products among these regions. This research wants to highlight major tradeable organic Agri Products and identify potentiality in trade among these regions. Study also identifies the possible scope of trade and future welfare creation among BIMSTEC members through the formation of regional trade agreement (RTA) particularly, based on the organic Agri products basket. In this research, researcher restricts the scope of organic Agri products, grown under system of agriculture without the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Researchers identify a list of 23 major organic Agri products under Harmonized System (HS) of classification under 4-digit codes for preliminary analysis of trade potentiality among these regions. This research has been established based on different econometric parameters commonly used for analyzing trade-related data. Basically, WITS (World Bank) data has been used for our analysis purposes. For identifying of intra-industry trade (IIT) researchers use the GrubelLloyd index and, for comparative evaluation of import effects in various forms of trade alignment namely, bi-lateral and sub-regional alignment, particularly in BIMSTEC countries researcher uses AI based Gravity model on trade