REGIONAL COOPERATION AND ECONOMIC INTEGRATION

PART II:
becoming wealthier consumes more of its goods and services rather than exporting them
and also consumes more foreign products” (Naghshopour 2008, p. 202).
2) When exports and imports as percentage of GDP are analyzed, we notice, again, that the
percentage is bigger for imports than for exports, which might not always be a healthy sign
of openness. This ratio is highest in case of Albania (imports exceed exports by 1.96 times)
and lowest in case of Croatia (1.19 times). For Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia and
Serbia the shares are 1.88; 1.36 and 1.74 respectively. The same conclusion stands when
analyzing the data for percentages of trade (the last column in Table 1). The presence of
mild openness is noticed probably only in the case of Macedonia (the percentage almost
exceeds 100% of GDP) and in no other country where the percentages are bellow 100%
(42.3 for Albania; 86.6 for Bosnia and Herzegovina; 74.2 for Croatia and 61.3 for Serbia).
So, in order to be truly globalizing nations, in the long run, SEE countries need to increase
substantially their exports.
3) As the openness of SEE countries compared to the world are concerned, the shares of
imports and exports for all SEE countries are very low and in the range 0.02-0.06 (except
for Croatia where the shares were between 0.15 and 0.17) but still, shares of imports were
greater than export shares. In any case, no matter our crude measure of openness, the data
does not provide any evidence of globalization.
2. Trade within the region of SEE
The geographical profile of the trade structure between the countries of SEE that we are
concentrating on is rather puzzled issue. No matter the geographical factors (the closeness
between the countries in the Region) it is a fact that due to various historical and political
reasons, the Region has never been politically integrated, so “trade flows are still bellow
their potential, suggesting that there is scope for direct action to promote trade even further”
(Falcetti et.al 2005, p.58). So, we witness the efforts for help of international organizations
to participate, or create institutions to foster trust. One among these initiatives is the
formation of CEFTA-2006 which finally leads to expectation that geographical proximity
would lead to trade creation in the Region.
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