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Trade Facilitation in South Asia: Landlocked Countries’ Perspective

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Abstract

This study has made a thorough analysis of export performance of South Asian landlocked countries—Afghanistan, Bhutan and Nepal. An estimation based on the gravity modelling technique shows that transport costs dominantly increase costs and lower trade. Also, the results suggest that landlocked countries in the region have about a 2.5 per cent trade disadvantage. The results show that the landlocked countries in the region can trade about 10 per cent more than other countries if they have better interaction with the trade facilitation index. We also document that a breakthrough for reducing trade costs is to improve the trade facilitation measure—the quality of governance, transparency, documentation processing time, infrastructure, transit facilities, and information and communication technology.

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Correspondence to Ramesh Chandra Paudel .

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Paudel, R.C. (2019). Trade Facilitation in South Asia: Landlocked Countries’ Perspective. In: Jayanthakumaran, K., Shukla, N., Harvie, C., Erdenetsogt, O. (eds) Trade Logistics in Landlocked and Resource Cursed Asian Countries . Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-6814-1_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-6814-1_4

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore

  • Print ISBN: 978-981-13-6813-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-981-13-6814-1

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