LAUNCH OF TRADE SENTINEL: AN EARLY MONITORING MECHANISM FOR TRADE POLICYAND RELATED CHANGES IN SOUTH ASIA
MARCH 07, 2024
Outcome Document
South Asia as the Least Integrated Region in the WorldSouth Asia is at an early stage of globalization. Average applied tariffs in South Asia were 11.8% in
2022, the highest of any region, against a world average of 8.6% and an East Asia and the Pacificaverage of 6.1%. Gains from trade have far from being realized. It is the least integrated region inthe world, with regional goods trade forming only 5.8% of total trade in 2020, compared with 21.1%
for ASEAN and 35.9% for East Asia. Not only is South Asia not integrated with the rest of the world,
it is even less integrated with its own neighbourhood. While the rest of the world is getting into
more sophisticated forms of cutting trade costs and integrating better with the neighbours, South
Asia is still struggling with first generation and basic trade reforms.
There is no early monitoring mechanism for trade policy changes in South Asian countries. The
existing trade databases such as the WTO Trade Reviews, the Global Trade Alert Database, andthe temporary trade barriers database by the World Bank only offer infrequent updates andsummarized data for a small set of countries. Trade monitoring mechanisms are essential forencouraging South Asian countries to tap into intra-regional trade and to dial down theirincreasingly protectionist policies.
The Trade Sentinel (https://www.tradesentinel.org) will fill important gaps in monitoring trade
policy actions for South Asian countries. It seeks to provide real time alerts, trends, and analysisof trade investment policy changes. This tool and this topic are more and more important for the
Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (KAS), through the Regional Economic Programme Asia (SOPAS) tocontribute to the discussion shaping important developments in international trade.
The info from the Trade Sentinel and corresponding analysis benefits integration andmultilateralism and serves as a warning to alert us to the risks of policy-driven geoeconomicfragmentation. This public good available for use of all stakeholders (policymakers, researchers,private sectors, and civil society) will be essential in preventing unfettered fragmentation and will
be a catalyst in helping the rules based multilateral system to adjust to an increasingly complicatedand rapidly changing world.
Additional Value from Trade Sentinel Website
The Trade Sentinel provides easy-to-read summaries of notifications and analyses of the impactof policy changes in terms of what changes, the products that are impacted, and the volume ofimports/exports affected. Tariff schedules of all 5 countries (Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan,and Sri Lanka) are converted to Excel files. It also offers the TariffCompare tool, a tariff search andcomparison tool that also provides visual representation. It also provides a policy trends overview
and a continuous monitoring of trade and investment actions.
Expert Feedback and Moving Forward
Cater Information According to Stakeholders’ Needs
It is important to identify and prioritize stakeholders so that the website can cater to their needs
and priorities. For governments, it is the availability of an easily understood and citable, policy
trends section. For the private sector, it is information on South Asian trading partners. They
typically refer to the individual country customs or commerce websites or government websitesto get the information. Finding a one-stop-shop trade website where you can access all aspects
whether it is trade or in the future, all the way up to FDI, is a very useful feature. Journalists on theother hand, want simple and user-friendly websites where information is readily available.

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So far, the data and digestible insights are the most useful for policy makers. The country
notifications section is also very useful as there are frequent changes on some aspects of trade
policy.
Increased Engagement with Stakeholders
Engagement with important stakeholders is extremely important. There is a lack of understanding
among the business community about various forms of non-tariff issues. The website alone will
not be sufficient. There is a need to take information to the policy makers and the media andregularly bring them together to have discussions. In addition, there is a need to let stakeholders
know about the portal and to generate traffic to the portal. Perhaps social media can be used topopularize it.
Also, it might be crucial to have subscription services, at the frequency users can choose(immediately/real time, weekly, monthly, or yearly).
Additional Features Can Be Included in the Long Run
Para tariffs in South Asia are extremely restrictive and are usually imposed in a very ad hoc manner.
In addition, there is limited data availability on para tariffs in the public domain. Separate
discussions on para tariffs would be extremely useful from a policy perspective.
Analyses on each country’s set of priority products and their regional markets and how trade
policies there could impact these products could be useful for policy makers. This could include
emphasis on export-related measures and tracking export duties and bans. Also, analyses onpolicies that restrict of facilitate exports by South Asian countries are as important as policies thatare related to their imports.
The policy trend section can be expanded, and more functions can be added. For example, specifictypes of commodities can be tracked by frequency, and type of products. It is also important toallow users to run queries on the website. Additional analyses can also be conducted on to what
extent a country’s trade policy changes are in line with good practice, the country’s multilateralcommitments, or how a unilateral change might affect a country’s commitments under a bilateralagreement, etc.
In the long run, (1) integrating investment policy changes, (2) updates on trade facilitations, (3)border trade statistics, (4) port restrictions data, (5) transit related measures, (6) preferential trade
agreements, (7) government standards and private standards, and (8) services trade data will also
be very important. And lastly, (9) gender- related tariff differential between products can also beanalyzed. Some of these gender related tariff differentials fare factoring in terms of advancing
women inclusion in trade.
Data on additional South Asia countries (Afghanistan, Bhutan, and Maldives) can also be added.
But prioritization among which information is most useful to stakeholders is necessary to establish
features that will serve as the the most compelling reasons or draw to visit the website.

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