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

An improved power supply made it possible to develop a special economic zone in Cambodia's Kampot province, attracting 40 businesses that sustain 10,000 much-needed jobs for the local impoverished community. Photo: ADB/Pring Samrang.

An improved power supply made it possible to develop a special economic zone in Cambodia's Kampot province, attracting 40 businesses that sustain 10,000 much-needed jobs for the local impoverished community. Photo: ADB/Pring Samrang.

Cross-Border Energy Trade Powers Development in Cambodia

A Greater Mekong Subregion project helps builds a transmission line from Viet Nam to Cambodia to provide a steady supply of electricity to communities and industries in the southern part of the country.


Better Roads Give New Life to Southern Cambodia

Heng Pich Chhay used to deliver fertilizer along a bumpy, muddy road in Kampot province to rice farms in his area. Today, he can reach every corner of Cambodia on the much-improved national road network. And his company has become one of the country’s biggest fertilizer distributors. Photo: ADB/Pring Samrang.

Better Roads Give New Life to Southern Cambodia

In Cambodia's Kampot province, local businesses thrive with the development of the Greater Mekong Subregion's Southern Coastal Corridor.



GMS transport ministers have endorsed a three-year action plan (2013 to 2016) to support implementation of the next phase of transport and trade facilitation measures. Photo: ADB.

GMS Ministers Endorse Plan to Accelerate Cross Border Transport, Trade

MANILA, PHILIPPINES (22 November 2013) – Countries of the Greater Mekong Subregion have endorsed measures to expedite and expand cross border transport and trade, including stepping up bilateral and trilateral country agreements.





Improving Accessibility of Financial Services in the Border-Gate Areas to Facilitate Cross-Border Trade: The Case of Viet Nam and Implications for Greater Mekong Subregion Cooperation

Using the case study of Viet Nam to draw implications for GMS cooperation, this paper investigates how users and providers of financial services in the border-gate areas see financial services as a factor of cross-border trade facilitation. It also examines how users and providers of financial services perceive the different dimensions of financial service accessibility and how accessibility affects customers' decisions to use financial services in the border-gate areas.