During the past decade, the GMS road network has expanded by almost 200,000 kilometers, and overland road freight has also almost doubled. Yet despite these advances, remaining barriers to trade and transport continue to inhibit the subregion’s full economic potential.
With much of the hard infrastructure in place, there has been a greater focus in recent years on the rules, regulations, agreements and other “software” to make the movement of goods and services across borders in the GMS faster, easier, cheaper, more compliant and more inclusive.
The GMS Transport and Trade Facilitation Action Program is working to overcome existing barriers in order to link the subregion to the ASEAN Economic Community’s single market and production base, as well as other regional cooperation initiatives.
The program is helping to expand transport and traffic rights along GMS corridors, particularly the North-South, East-West and Southern Economic Corridors; simplify and modernize customs procedures and border management; and strengthen the capacity of sanitary and phytosanitary agencies in the subregion.
The GMS Transport and Trade Facilitation Action Program builds on the success of the GMS Cross Border Transport Facilitation Agreement (CBTA), which has helped to consolidate non-physical measures needed to streamline the cross-border movement of goods, vehicles and people within the subregion.
Learn more:
• Statement of the Fifth Meeting of the Joint Committee for the CBTA (16 December 2016)
• Statement of the Fourth Meeting of the Joint Committee for the CBTA and 3-Year Blueprint on Transport and Trade Facilitation, 2013-2016 (22 November 2013)
• Statement of the Third Meeting of the Joint Committee for the CBTA (17 June 2010
• Statement of the Second Meeting of the Joint Committee for the CBTA (20 March 2007)
• Statement of the First Meeting of the Joint Committee for the CBTA (30 April 2004)