Impact of India-ASEAN Free Trade Agreement: An Assessment from the Trade Creation and Trade Diversion Effects

Abstract

This article investigates the impacts on the India–Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Free Trade Agreement (IAFTA) on trade creation and trade diversion. The gravity model is employed, where multilateral resistance terms are included. A panel data set of 45 countries that included India, ASEAN-10 nations and India’s top 34 trading partners in 2018 were used for the period from 1996 to 2018. The article explored that IAFTA leads to a trade creation in total bilateral trade in terms of exports and imports. The analysis further explored that the import creation effect was higher than that of the export creation effect.