Regional Integration and Trade of India and Bangladesh with ASEAN Countries:

Abstract

Globalization, relaxation of trade barriers with free movement of goods and services is considered to accelerate world trade and speed up the growth process. It is also expected to improve efficiency of resource use, reduce inequality, unemployment, imbibe completion and thereby optimise human welfare. However, severalc ountries despite adopting globalization are lagging behind for the lacko f competitiveness and inefficient management of activities, technological backwardness and paucity of capital. Thus an attempt is made towards building sub-regional cooperation in asia for having ompetitive strength at regional level. Indias look east policy and engagement with its eastern neighbours including Bangladesh and ASEAN is an effort to form regional trade bloc to foster development.This paper offers an interactive analysis of progress of trade of india and Bangladesh with ASEAN and shows how both the countries could integrate with these nations and utilise the opportunities created since 2001.dendrograms reveal that india and Bangladesh have close ties in economic and social fields amongs Asian countries after 1991.with much effort towards integration with ASEAN after 2000,Indias export and import have increased significantly, but the trade gap has been windend. In case of Bangladesh,export to ASEAN has remained at a very low level,though one-fifth of its import still come from these countries. Thus trade gap of Bangladesh with ASEAN is widening at a faster pace than that of India. However,Bangladesh has been able to reduce the gap with India in overall export and import per capita. but there is ample scope for both these nations to expand trade through enhanced exports of goods demanded by these countries.