Growing Together: Economic Integration for an Inclusive and - escap

stake in the outcome of the projects, creating
incentives for their effective implementation.
The Asia-Pacific Regional Integration Fund
could provide financing to enhance connectivity
between lower-income countries
and the main markets in the region by linking
highways, railways, and ports. This fund
could also provide financing in areas related
to ICT, broadband, the use of satellites, trade
facilitation, electronic data interchange and
radio frequency identification (EDI/RFID),
harmonization of customs and conformity
procedures. Financing from the fund should
normally stimulate private investments in the
beneficiary countries. Thus funding from the
fund should be limited to a maximum of 30
per cent of the total project cost.
The Asia-Pacific Technology Development
Fund could provide assistance to joint research
and development programmes of Asia-Pacific
enterprises based in a least two countries, one
of which should be a developing country. The
fund would be administered by APTECH, as
proposed above. An important objective of
this fund could be to assist enterprises based
in relatively lower-income countries of the
region in accessing modern technologies
and developing productive capacities. The
assistance from the fund could be limited to
50 per cent of the total project cost.
With these steps accompanying the programmes
of regional economic integration,
regionalism in Asia and the Pacific would
hopefully become a model of an inclusive,
balanced, equitable and participatory development
process for other regions to emulate.
ENDNOTES
1 Asia Society and International Rice Research
Institute, 2010.
2 Hazell, 2009.
3 United Nations, 2011.
4 ESCAP, 2009b.
5 United Nations, “Hunger: Who are the hungry?”.
Available from www.un.org/en/globalissues/briefing
papers/food/whoarethehungry.shtml.
6 Ibid.
7 FAO, 1996.
8 United Nations, 2009, p. 27.
9 ASEAN, 2009a.
10 United Nations, 2009.
11 SAARC, 2009.
12 FAO and SAARC, 2008.
13 SAARC, 2011.
14 Food Secure Pacific, 2010.
15 Cokanasiga, Keil and Sisifa, 2011.
16 As of February 2010, the 25 members of the
commission were Afghanistan, Australia, Bangladesh,
Bhutan Cambodia, China, Fiji, France, India, Indonesia,
the Islamic Republic of Iran, Japan, the Lao People’s
Democratic Republic, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal,
New Zealand, Pakistan, the Philippines, the Republic
of Korea, Sri Lanka, Thailand, the United Kingdom of
Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the United States of
America and Viet Nam.
17 ASEAN, 2011b.
18 Alene and Coulibaly, 2009; Timmer, 2005; World
Bank, 2008; ESCAP, 2012.
19 APAARI, 2010.
20 World Business Council for Sustainable Development
and the International Union for Conservation of Nature,
2008.
21 ADB, 2007b.
22 Ibid.
23 FAO and SAARC 2008.
24 UNISDR, 2012.
25 ESCAP and UNISDR, 2010, p. 36; ESCAP, 2012.
26 ESCAP, 2011f.
27 See Thailand, Office of the National Economic and
Social Development Board, 2012; Thailand, Ministry of
Finance, 2011.
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