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Developing regional value chains in the textile and garment sector of South Asia
Get PDFWhile textile and garment (T&G) sector has been a prominent driver of trade led growth in South Asia, the scope for intra-regional trade in T&G subsectors remains largely underutilized in the subregion. In recent years, the sustained growth of South Asia’s global T&G exports has been increasingly threatened by a number of exogenous factors such as shifting demand and supply patterns in the world market and endogenous factors such as eroding traditional competencies including low labor and material costs. By facilitating formation of regional value chains (RVCs) in the sector through greater intra-regional trade in T&G intermediates, South Asian countries can potentially lower production costs, enhance productivity, improve specialization, promote product differentiation, and thereby enhance their competencies in the markets for finished T&G products in both external and internal markers. Employing an improvised methodology for assessing trade potential at a disaggregated level, this paper identifies a country-wise list of T&G intermediates and finished products with high scope for enhanced trade between South Asian countries. About 1722 potential products (at HS 6-digit level), including both inputs and outputs of the T&Gs industry, are identified with a combined scope for increasing intra-regional trade at least by US 3.7 billion in textile machinery, US 2.4 million in yarn and US 7.5 billion, requiring enhanced cross-border investment flows. The paper further discusses key policy reforms required for strengthening RVCs in the subregion, including tariff liberalization, pruning of sensitive lists under SAFTA, addressing non-tariff barriers (NTBs), implementing trade facilitation measures and promoting FDI in the T&G sector. </p
Financing research and development for new vaccines in Asia-Pacific developing countries
Get PDFThere have been many important innovations in the landscape of vaccine development for neglected and emerging infectious diseases, such as the launch of public-private product development partnerships (PDPs). However, there is still a gap in funding the development of such vaccines, especially when it comes to financing late-stage trials. There is a financial risk in investing in late-stage trials, and there is no guarantee of a commercial market, particularly for the most neglected diseases of poverty. One result of the funding gap is that there are many infectious diseases with a high burden in the Asia-Pacific region for which there are no licensed, highly effective vaccines, including HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, soil-transmitted helminths and schistosomiasis. There are also neglected infectious diseases that affect populations in the region where the existing vaccines have limitations, such as malaria, dengue, and Japanese encephalitis. Understanding how much additional financing is needed for vaccine research and development (R&D) for neglected and emerging infections is a crucial first step in closing the financing gap. Annual spending on vaccine R&D for neglected diseases was approximately 3 billion is needed annually, suggesting there is an annual financing gap of 2 billion. For vaccine R&D for emerging diseases, annual spending on the Blueprint diseases was 350 million in 2018, but the annual financing need is approximately 520 million, suggesting an annual funding gap of 170 million. How much is the Asia-Pacific region investing in vaccine R&D through the public, private, and philanthropic sectors and via PDPs? Using data from the G-FINDER database, we estimate that from 2018–2020, there was only 35 million annually being invested in the region in neglected disease vaccine R&D and 3.8 million annually being invested in emerging infectious disease vaccine R&D. These are very low levels of financing compared with the need. Despite such low levels of financing, our report finds that there is significant vaccine trials and manufacturing capacity in many developing countries of the region. Closing the vaccine R&D funding gap in the Asia-Pacific region would have enormous health and economic returns. The various policy approaches to closing this gap can be organized into (1) resource mobilization (e.g. government contributions, airline ticket levies), (2) pooling of resources (e.g. a regional pooled R&D fund), and (3) strategic purchasing (see figure)
Social Outlook for Asia and the Pacific : The Workforce We Need
No full textAsia and the Pacific’s success in achieving the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development depends on a healthy, protected and productive workforce. People of working age make up two thirds of the region’s population and more than half of the global labour force. We depend on them to power the economic growth, competitiveness and sustainable development needed to accelerate the region’s progress towards all 17 Sustainable Development Goals. Our workforce generates the tax revenues needed to pay for essential public goods and services and ensures the well-being of dependent family members. Yet the working-age population of Asia and the Pacific is under pressure, denied the decent work opportunities it needs to fulfil its potential.
Decent work entails equality of opportunity and treatment at work, dignity and safety in the workplace, a fair income and the freedom for workers to organize and participate in decisions related to their work and lives. It provides workers with access to social protection and health care, thereby ensuring that negative coping strategies, such as reducing food intake and selling productive assets, are avoided in the event of job loss or sickness. Decent work is necessary to ensure an adequate standard of living, reduce poverty and inequality, protect people from life cycle contingencies and promote inclusive growth. It is through well-functioning labour markets that the benefits of economic growth can spread to the whole population.</p
Managing in-land water disasters in the Aral Sea : sub-regional pathways for adaptation and resilience
Get PDFESCAP’s analytical work on managing in-land water disasters in the Aral Sea is organized in two parts. While Part I titled ‘Aral Sea, Central Asian Countries and Climate Change in the 21st Century’ deals with water management perspectives, it unfolds the processes that led to complete depletion of water resources, i.e. water use exceeding available resources. It also highlights that by 2030-2050, the countries of the region will also reach the limits of irrigated land expansion because of its limited availability. Despite the depletion of water and irrigation resources in the region, in their national strategies and programs, each country plans for further growth of water use for irrigation and hydropower in the future. Therefore, a coordinated regional water policy is needed to balance the water resources use and improve the ecological situation in the subregion.
Part II of the analytical work - ‘managing in-land water disasters in the Aral Sea: sub-regional pathways for adaptation and resilience’ capitalizes on state-of-the-art climate modelling, data science, geo-spatial tools, digital elevation models and analytics to present the risk in the region. Considering a transboundary hazard – the Aral Sea represents shared vulnerabilities and risks. It’s crucial for the adaptation and resilience priorities of transboundary Aral Sea hazard to be risk informed, especially on the sub-regional specificities. Multi-hazard risk assessment and early warning systems are highly useful in mitigating all types of cropland exposure to multi-hazard, particularly drought, and flood. Early warning monitoring is necessary to plan and reduce the impact of multi-hazard on agriculture, which is directly linked to food security, and the impact on the people. Analysis results show that adaptation measures like strengthening multi-hazard risk assessment and early warning systems as well as improving dryland agriculture crop production have the highest priority score in all 5 Central Asian countries in the various climate change scenarios.Recognizing the context of the United Nations Special Programme for the Aral Sea basin, ESCAP’s comprehensive study using a multi-sectoral and multi-disciplinary disaster risk reduction approach aims to devise a regional mechanism involving all concerned countries of the Aral Sea.Recommendations of the expert meetingOn 14th March 2022, ESCAP organized a regional meeting of experts on the Aral Sea to discuss the key findings of this study. Considering ESCAP’s mandate and comparative advantage, the experts recommended organizing a policy dialogue on managing the risk of in-land water disasters in the Aral Sea on the side-lines of sixth North and Central Asian Multi-Stakeholder Forum on Implementation of Sustainable Development Goals. The objective would be to further shape and refine the proposed subregional cooperation framework with a suggested action plan. Accordingly, ESCAP plans to organize a policy dialogue at the upcoming forum in 2022. The proposed framework will help factor transboundary risks of the Aral Sea in national Adaptation Plans, Disaster Risk Reduction strategies, and Voluntary National Reviews
Asia-Pacific digital trade regulatory review 2022 : ESCAP-OECD initiative on digital trade regulatory analysis
Get PDFESCAP-OECD Initiative on Digital Trade Regulatory AnalysisThis report is a preliminary step towards a greater understanding of the digital trade policy environment in the Asia-Pacific region. It provides an overview of the digital trade policy environment in the Asia-Pacific region, based on data collected from 21 sample economies. It also provides policy considerations for regional cooperation to enhance interoperability and inclusivity of the digital economy and cross-border transactions in the new trading environment for the Asia-Pacific region.
The findings in this report are based on ESCAP’s – and OECD’s tools for digital trade-related regulatory analysis. These tools are a new Regional Digital Trade Integration Index (RDTII) developed by ESCAP in cooperation with other United Nations Regional Commissions (UNRCs) and the Digital Services Trade Restrictiveness Index (DSTRI) and Computer Services STRI developed by the OECD. Based on the RDTII, ESCAP reviews regulatory measures affecting compliance costs of cross-border business in the digital age (Please see the RDTII 1.0 Guide for more information about the UNRCs’ RDTII tool). It follows by OECD discussions based on findings from the STRI tools on trade barriers affecting digitally enabled services that can be compared with countries outside the region.</p
Strategies to promote regional power grid connectivity and Cross-Border Electricity Trade (CBET) in South and South-West Asia
Get PDFCountries of the South and South-West Asia subregion have mutual complementarities in terms of their energy resource endowments as well as their aggregate energy supply-demand patterns, providing ideal conditions for implementing CBET at the subregional level. The levels of energy integration through an interconnected power grid in the subregion has been suboptimal so far due to various constraints by way of capacity limitations and lack of political consensus. However, there have been several bilateral and plurilateral initiatives for grid connectivity and trade in electricity, which can potentially become building blocks for broader CBET in the subregion.
This technical paper takes stock of various initiatives in the SSWA subregion for promoting power grid integration and trade in electricity with the aim of exploring framing a forward-looking agenda for CBET in the subregion. It reviews existing legal and institutional frameworks on energy cooperation under the subregional intuitions of SAARC, BIMSTEC and ECO as well as various bilateral and plurilateral power purchase agreements (PPAs) and transmission service agreements (TSAs). The paper finds that existing frameworks at the subregional level provides several valuable overarching provisions which can guide broader CBET, while bilateral PPAs and TSAs can be scaled-up for creating a transparent, mutually beneficial and market oriented regulatory environment for promoting it. However, concerted actions from all member countries are needed in adapting their respective domestic policies and practices with respect to the energy sector and in harmonizing regulations at the regional level to cater to the needs of free trade in electricity. They also need to work together to improve coordination with each other and to create a conducive institutional architecture for CBET.</p
