India s trade with asean a study on trends Determinants and opportunities

Abstract

newline Today, India is the fastest growing major economy in the world and offers immense newlineopportunities for business and economic partnership. India s engagement with newlineASEAN has received a major thrust with Government s announcement of Look East newlinePolicy. It was imperative that India had to consolidate its position in Asia to counter newlineChina s dominance in the region and bring a balance of power to protect its interests. newlineEver since Indian economic policies have been liberalised in 1990s, ASEAN being a newlinenatural partner geographically and culturally, the trade between India and ASEAN newlinecountries has substantially increased. After Mr Modi took over the charge in 2014, newlinethe BJP government in India has termed the policy as Act East Policy now by giving newlinefurther importance to improve relations with ASEAN partners through various kinds newlineof treaties and mutual agreements in trade, energy, transportation and military newlinecooperation. Today, the ASEAN and India together form largest economic regions, newlinewith a total population of about 1.8 billion and a total GDP of more than US$ 3 newlinetrillion. ASEAN occupies 4th largest position in India s trade, accounting for 10.2 newlinepercent of India s total trade. India occupies 7th position in ASEAN s trade and there newlineare perfect complementarities between service economy of India and manufacturing newlineoriented ASEAN. newlineThe study aims at exploring intensity of trade relations between India and ASEAN for newlinethe period 2000 to 2017. Further, the study assesses the commodity trade patterns newlinebetween India and ASEAN and identifies the potential commodities for future trade. newlineA detailed analysis was done using a novel framework of Trade Openness Indicators, newlineTrade Intensity Indices (TII), Revealed Comparative Advantage (RCA), Volrath s newlineRevealed Competitiveness Index, The Lafay s Index, Intra-Industry Trade Index and newlineAugmented Gravity Model. There are some gaps in literature in terms of the range of newlinecommodities that were covered as well as inclusion of all the member states of newlineASEAN. The study fulfils the need to re-vali