Growing Together: Economic Integration for an Inclusive and - escap

Two
Towards a broader
integrated market
The most significant forms of economic
integration in Asia and the Pacific have been
through trade, investment and migration.
Many of these activities have benefited from
various preferential arrangements, each of
which covers a limited number of countries. To
take fuller advantage of the region’s enormous
opportunities, regional integration could be
better pursued by broader arrangements that
cover the whole region.
Asia and the Pacific is the world’s most dynamic
trading region. Between 2000 and 2010, global
trade increased by an annual average of 9 per
cent, but trade within the region expanded by 12
per cent. 1 This pattern continued after the global
financial crisis when businesses in Asia and the
Pacific became more eager to trade with each
other. Faced with stagnant demand in traditional
export markets, exporters looked increasingly at
the growing purchasing power in China, India,
Indonesia, the Russian Federation and other Asia-
Pacific economies.
Trading opportunities
The extent of the trading opportunities is highlighted
in figure II.1. This shows that intraregional exports
have far outpaced those to Europe, North America
and the rest of the world, and that they will
continue to do so between 2010 and 2016, when
they are expected to rise from $3.1 trillion to
between $5.6 trillion and $6.8 trillion. Already more
than half of Asia-Pacific trade is intraregional, with
the proportion increasing between 2000 and 2010
from 48 to 54 per cent (table II.1). If current trends
continue, Asia and the Pacific would become the
world’s largest regional market by 2012.
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