Transport and Trade Facilitation

Countries of the Greater Mekong Subregion are working to make the movement of goods and services across borders faster, easier, cheaper, more compliant, and more inclusive.

Over the past decade, the Greater Mekong Subregion’s (GMS) road network has expanded by almost 200,000 kilometers, and overland road freight has almost doubled. Yet despite these advances, remaining barriers to trade and transport continue to inhibit the subregion’s full economic potential and the cost of cross-border land transport remains high.

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 Economic Cooperation Program Strategic Framework 2030 (GMS-2030) focus on trade facilitation will modernize customs and establish sanitary and phytosanitary regulations. It will also strengthen links to the private sector. GMS-2030 will support the development of e-commerce platforms in the subregion. By facilitating investment, the strategy will ease or eliminate investment flow constraints and create an integrated investment market. GMS-2030 was endorsed and adopted at the 7th GMS Summit of Leaders in September 2021. It aims to provide a new setting for the development of this subregion for the next decade.

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 the GMS Cross Border Transport Facilitation Agreement (CBTA). route network; simplify and modernize customs procedures and border management; and strengthen the capacity of sanitary and phytosanitary agencies in the subregion.

To facilitate progressive implementation of the CBTA, the GMS Transport Ministers as members of the CBTA Joint Committee agreed to an “Early Harvest” memorandum of understanding to allow the issuance and mutual recognition of GMS Road Transport Permits along the CBTA Protocol 1 route network and the border crossing points along these routes starting August 2018. This initiative was suspended with the closure of international borders during the Covid-19 health pandemic, but reinstated by the Ministers for a further three-year period at the Eighth CBTA Joint Committee meeting in December 2023.

Related

• ‘Early Harvest’ Implementation of the Cross-Border Transport Facilitation Agreement

• Joint Committee for the CBTA

• Statement of the Seventh Meeting of the Joint Committee for the CBTA (13 March 2019)

Focal Persons at the Asian Development Bank

    Trade Facilitation 

  • Asadullah Sumbal
    Regional Cooperation and Integration Unit Southeast Asia Department

  • Dorothea Lazaro 
    Regional Cooperation and Integration Unit
    Central and West Asia Department

Transport Facilitation 

  • Mohammad Nazrul Islam  
    Transport Sector Office
    Sectors Group

Other Concerned Staff & Consultants

  • Antonio Ressano 
    Regional Cooperation and Integration Unit
    Southeast Asia Department

  • Lucia Martin Casanueva
    Regional Cooperation and Integration Unit
    Southeast Asia Department/GMS Secretariat 

Send inquiries to GMS Secretariat. 

The additional financing will scale up efforts to improve food safety and ensure plant and animal health, as part of an initiative to improve sanitary and phytosanitary capacity in the Lao PDR. Photo: ADB.

ADB Funds to Scale Up Sanitary, Phytosanitary Efforts in Lao PDR

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The group visited a shoe factory at the Bavet Industrial Park. Photo: ADB Cambodia Resident Mission.

The group visited a shoe factory at the Bavet Industrial Park. Photo: ADB Cambodia Resident Mission.

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The economic corridors of the Greater Mekong Subregion are not just roads or highways, but they encompass a variety of economic activities that run parallel to main transport routes.

The economic corridors of the Greater Mekong Subregion are not just roads or highways, but they encompass a variety of economic activities that run parallel to main transport routes. Photo: ADB.

Explainer: What is an Economic Corridor?

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The road project is expected to improve travel between Yangon (in photo), Myanmar’s largest city, and Mae Sot in western Thailand.

The road project is expected to improve travel between Yangon (in photo), Myanmar’s largest city, and Mae Sot in western Thailand. Photo credit: ADB.

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The project will improve cross-border connectivity in the Greater Mekong Subregion. This will help create jobs and raise incomes for local residents. Photo: ADB.

ADB to Support Cross-Border Economic Activities Between Viet Nam and Guangxi, PRC with $450 Million Loan

MANILA, PHILIPPINES (8 December 2016) – The Asian Development Bank has approved a $450 million investment program to promote cross-border economic activities between Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region of the People’s Republic of China and northern Viet Nam. The program will focus on developing the North-South Economic Corridor under the Greater Mekong Subregion Cooperation Program.