Cost of Economic Non-Cooperation to Consumers in South Asia-Phase I and II (COENCOSA)

In early 2012, SAWTEE conducted a project titled “Cost of Economic Non-cooperation to Consumers in South Asia (COENCOSA)” in Nepal. The project was implemented by SAWTEE’s member organization Consumer Unity and Trust Society (CUTS) International in five South Asian countries (Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka) with support from the Asia Foundation. The project was initiated with the objective of analyzing the reasons for economic non-cooperation between countries in the region, assessing the costs thereof in terms of consumer welfare loss, and providing recommendations to minimize such welfare loss. In order to ensure some tangible and incremental progress towards reducing the costs of doing trade within the region, COENCOSA-II was initiated in August 2012. The basic objectives of COENCOSA-II were to generate political buy-in for enhanced and improved intra-regional trade in South Asia through focused advocacy on customs-related and other procedural non-tariff barriers (NTBs), and to conduct a set of focused result- and action-oriented activities on selected issues of customs-related and other procedural NTBs targeting some key stakeholders.