Regulatory Convergence Against Non-Tariff Barriers in ASEAN and the Effectiveness of the ASEAN Trade Repository (ATR)

12 Pages Posted: 6 Dec 2018

See all articles by Haniff Ahamat

Haniff Ahamat

International Islamic University of Malaysia (IIUM) - Ahmad Ibrahim Kulliyyah of Laws

Nurul Hanan Abdull Manaf

National University of Malaysia (UKM)

Abstract

The regulation of non-tariff barriers in the context of ASEAN has many complications. One of them is the difficulty of defining and (NTBs) classifying NTBs. This limits the scope of the regulation of NTBs in the existing WTO covered agreements as well as in the ASEAN Economic Community instruments including the ASEAN Trade in Goods Agreement (ATIGA). This paper tries to address that issue by resorting to the soft approach. The soft approach tool selected is the ASEAN Trade Repository (ATR). This paper analyses the electronic content of the ATR which like any regional trade portal embodies the non-tariff measures (NTMs) introduced by ASEAN Member States (AMS) and the laws, regulations and orders on which they are based. This paper finds that the success of the ATR in addressing the NTMs depends on the success of AMS’ National Trade Repositories (NTRs). This paper finds that for most AMS, there is connectivity between ATR and NTRs. But there are challenges to the effective implementation of the ATR. This paper concludes by linking the analysis of the ATR to addressing the inadequacies in the regulation of NTBs in ASEAN. The ATR facilitates the identification of NTMs which should be eliminated as NTBs.

Keywords: Non-Tariff Barriers, Trade Liberalisation, ASEAN Regional Integration, Trade Facilitation

Suggested Citation

Ahamat, Haniff and Abdull Manaf, Nurul Hanan, Regulatory Convergence Against Non-Tariff Barriers in ASEAN and the Effectiveness of the ASEAN Trade Repository (ATR). ASEAN Journal of Legal Studies, Vol. 1, No. 1, 2018, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3296757

Haniff Ahamat (Contact Author)

International Islamic University of Malaysia (IIUM) - Ahmad Ibrahim Kulliyyah of Laws ( email )

P.O. Box 10, 50728
Kuala Lumpur
Malaysia

Nurul Hanan Abdull Manaf

National University of Malaysia (UKM) ( email )

43600 Bandar Baru Bangi
Bangi, Selangor 06010
Malaysia

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