TRADE FACILITATION PERFORMANCE INFLUENCES ON ASEAN TRADE FLOWS

Anh Thu Nguyen¹ and Thi Mai Thanh Tran²

¹Vietnam National University, University of Business and Economics, Hanoi, Vietnam
²Vietnam Accademy of Social Sciences, Vietnam Institute of Economics, Hanoi, Vietnam

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) considers trade facilitation as a driving force in forming a single market and a single production base. This paper constructs an ASEAN scorecard for measuring the performance of trade facilitation strategic plans by ASEAN member states. Next, a structural gravity model is used in the paper in order to estimate the trade facilitation performance influence on ASEAN trade flows. The fact that the indicator of easing Nontariff Barriers (NTBs) and institutional coordination, on the one hand, and the ASEAN member states’ engagement indicator, on the other, had the highest enforcement scores in ASEAN in the period 2017-2019. Those two indicators also exert the biggest influence on ASEAN trade flows, especially ASEAN extra-regional trade.

Keywords: ASEAN, trade facilitation, trade flows

JEL Classification: F100, F140, F150