Suchergebnisse

AbstractAs World Trade Organization (WTO) membership becomes almost universal, the Pacific island countries stand out as the largest group of outsiders. As the islands seek to replace reliance on preferential trading arrangements by competitive exports, market access and trade facilitation have become key policy concerns. In this context, WTO membership and regional or bilateral trade agreements are complementary institutions for increasing the potential success of new exports. The WTO sets out agreed principles for market access, and membership includes a dispute resolution process that provides redress against unjustified obstacles to exports, whilst trade facilitation in the sense of overcoming particular cost‐raising obstacles to trade is better delivered by regional and bilateral agreements. The argument is supported by evidence from Pacific and other small island economies.

While the interactions between trade and the environment have begun to receive sustained attention, little notice has been taken of the environmen tal ramifications of the new World Trade Organization/ This organization, a product of the recently concluded Uruguay Round of GATT negotiations, may have serious implications for the future of sustainable development. Much of environmental management is process, so the institutional setting for implementation is critical to the success of many environmental regimes. The environmental dimension of trade policy may become a dominant issue for the WTO, and it is ill equipped to address it.

To develop a policy for creation of economic value and utilise the development of Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) free trade area for Thailand, two research tools are adopted in this article. The first one is based on the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) model, adopted as a tool to explore quantitative impacts from the implementation of free trade area. Due to the limitations of the model, however, we have adopted a complementing qualitative analytical framework to ensure that the research must be as comprehensive as possible in every aspect. The qualitative analytical framework chosen in this article is called PEST analysis. Having completed field research, in-depth interviews, focus group meetings and model studies, this article concludes that BIMSTEC is a large-scale market with high purchasing power and growth rate as well as a great source of vast natural and human resources. It is situated not far from Thailand, and at the same time, its social and cultural conditions are very close to those of Thailand's. It concludes that a stronger BIMSTEC is an essential foundation of Indo-Pacific. JEL Codes: F13, F 15