Report

EFFECTIVE ADDITIONAL MARKET ACCESS UNDER SAFTA: COUNTRYWISE ANALYSIS 41
Table 4.3 EAMA Created by SAFTA (Concession Receivers Global Exports in %)
India Bangladesh Pakistan Sri Lanka Nepal Bhutan Maldives
India 18 57 4 0 0 60
Bangladesh 51 44 33 44 10 5
Pakistan 70 23 28 44 62 80
Sri Lanka 2 92 50 63 66 34
Nepal 0 15 23 21 26 40
Bhutan 0 10 23 33 37 26
Maldives 69 78 82 74 82 75
In sum, when considering the effective market
access created in terms of global imports India and
Pakistan are the two countries which provide the
largest EAMA as a result of SAFTA. While India
provides EAMA to the extent of 86% to Pakistan
and 85% to Bangladesh and Maldives, Pakistan
provides EAMA to the extent of 70–72% for almost
all the member countries. India provides only1%
of EAMA to Sri Lanka, the reason being that under
the Indo-Lanka agreement India is already
providing substantial concessions to Sri Lanka. For
countries such as Nepal, Bhutan and Maldives India
has already nearly completely liberalised imports
from them hence the additional market access to
be created as a result of SAFTA is zero.
After India and Pakistan, Bhutan and Nepal
provide the largest EAMA to the member countries,
with Bhutan providing around 66–68% of and
Nepal that of 46–52% of their global imports
respectively. Both the countries provide no EAMA
to India since concessions already exist under pre
existing trade agreements. Sri Lanka provides
market access to the extent of 34–35% for all the
members except India. But this again is because of
the above mentioned fact of Indo-Lanka FTA.
Maldives provides EAMA to the extent of only
35% of its global imports. This implies that
Maldives’s sensitive list contains products which
constitute 65% of its global imports. Bangladesh
provides the lowest EAMA to the extent of only
23% to the SAFTA members. This gives the
indication that Bangladesh’s sensitive list is
extremely restrictive. But only when the EAMA
under the next two measures are considered can a
proper picture emerge on this count.
EFFECTIVE ADDITIONAL MARKET ACCESS:
COUNTRYWISE ANALYSIS
All the three measures discussed above are calculated
for each member vis-à-vis each other member. In this
section the paper tries to highlight the EAMA for each
member.
Bangladesh
When observed in terms of its global imports
Bangladesh’s sensitive list does appear to be quite
sensitive since it only provides EAMA of 23% to all
the other member countries. But when the EAMA
created in terms of bilateral trade with each member is
concerned, the picture does change. In fact, Bangladesh
provides EAMA up to 76% for Nepal, which is the
highest. The weightage of the EAMA created for the
other members in terms of it’s bilateral imports is 9%
for Bhutan, 25% for India, 25% for Maldives, 22%
for Pakistan and 45% for Sri Lanka. When the EAMA
created by Bangladesh is analysed in terms of the value
of the exports of the members who receive concessions
it can be seen that while for countries such as India
(51%), Nepal (44%), Pakistan (44%) and Sri Lanka
(33%) it is quite high, for countries such as Bhutan
(10%) and Maldives (5%) it is quite low.
Bhutan
Bhutan provides EAMA to the extent of only 66–68%
of its global imports. That is to say, that Bhutan’s
sensitive lists contain products which constitute 44%
of its global imports.
When looked at from the point of view of its present
bilateral imports from South Asian partners, the EAMA
provided is 6% for Bangladesh and 22% for Nepal.
India gains no EAMA to Bhutan since it already has an
FTA with Bhutan. Bhutan did not trade with the other
South Asian countries for the year under consideration
(2004).
When looked at from the point of view of the
global exports of South Asian partners, the EAMA
created by Bhutan is 10% for Bangladesh, 26% for
Maldives, 37% for Nepal, 23% for Pakistan and 33%
for Sri Lanka.