By Mehmet Enes Beşer
Apart from proximity, shared development concerns, and growing complementarities, Southeast Asia and South Asia are still worlds apart from becoming as economically integrated as they would or ought to be. Though intra-regional trade in ASEAN and SAARC remains on the policy agenda, inter-regional trade, investment, and connectivity between the two subregions lag far behind their potential. Behind this lag is a disconnection between regional institutions tasked with driving integration. Organizations such as ASEAN, SAARC, BIMSTEC, and IORA operate in silos but with little concert or harmony in policy. To have a more integrated, richer future in Southeast and South Asia, such organizations need to work closer—and less obtrusively.
There is much institutional architecture. Its most sophisticated regional economic integration structure, ASEAN, is a most regionally successful model to this date due to initiatives like the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). The South Asian experience has been less dazzling on regional cooperation. The SAARC success has been undermined by political competition, namely the India-Pakistan confrontation, whereas BIMSTEC, although increasingly engaged, lacks the organizational influence of ASEAN. IORA, however, brings together states of each subregion without a direct economic mandate.
All such institutional fragmentation encourages duplication, inefficiency, and failure to provide synergies. Trade facilitation efforts, infrastructure funding, and energy interconnection, for example, will be sought uncoordinatedly in various forums. Trans-subregional initiatives—e.g., trans-national railway corridors, trans-border digital infrastructure, or cross-border renewable energy trade—too often fall victim to institutional silos or geopolitical caution.
To do this, one would commence institutionalizing ASEAN-South Asian framework conversation at the strategic level. Regular joint ministerial meetings between BIMSTEC and ASEAN, for instance, may act as official channels of policy coordination. The sessions can take care of harmonization of commerce, interoperability of customs, and cyberspace connectivity. Technical committees or working parties may also be established to synchronize the regulatory norms, investment incentives, and transport logistics among members.
Apart from official summits, ASEAN can also be a model of best practices in consensus building, regional conflict resolution, and private sector involvement. Although political situations in the South Asian region are highly dissimilar, ASEAN’s practice of dealing with competing interests through pragmatic and flexible diplomacy can offer its southern neighbors something to learn from.
Digital economy cooperation may be the most exciting possible domain of integration. Both nations have huge, young, and digitally literate populations and are therefore natural targets for cross-border e-commerce, fintech partnerships, and digital global public goods development. Institutions can take facilitating roles in making this a reality through building interoperable digital trade regimes, data protection norms, and collaborative innovation hubs. The India-Singapore cross-border UPI payment integration is the best example, but regional institutions must take initiatives to upscale similar efforts.
Connectivity of physical and financial infrastructure is another sector of importance. Institutions must synchronize their infrastructure priorities to achieve optimal regional impact. The Asian Development Bank (ADB), serving both subregions, can play the role of a bridge through cross-subregional projects promoting land and sea connectivity, such as the India-Myanmar-Thailand Trilateral Highway or Bay of Bengal port trade. Inter-coordinated planning between ASEAN member states and BIMSTEC member states would not only make such projects technically feasible but economically linked as well.
Furthermore, institutions in the local region must formulate a more people-oriented definition of integration that goes beyond trade volumes and includes human development, climate resilience, and mobility of labor. Regional systems of skills recognition coordinated across the board, social protection for migrant workers, and regional climate finance can enable more substantive economic cooperation under broader, more people-focused regionalism.
But instant strategic cooperation between regional institutions won’t happen. It requires top-level political leadership, supported by powerful secretariats and well-established mandates. Trust-building, mutual respect of interests, and shared vision for pan-Asian prosperity are necessities. Regional powers like India and Indonesia can act as catalysts by facilitating this cooperation in multilateral institutions as well as through bilateral diplomacy.
Conclusion
The argument for deeper economic integration between South Asia and Southeast Asia is strong. Geography, demography, and trends in development are all moving together to make collaboration not a choice but a necessity in a world of global uncertainty and economic fragmentation.
But if hope is to be made a reality, however, institutions of the region need to do more than sit side by side—need to cooperate. Through strategic conversation, policy coordination, and joint planning of infrastructure, ASEAN, SAARC, BIMSTEC, and IORA, collectively, can build the foundations for a more interdependent and secure regional economy. If they do, it will create a new age of South-Southeast Asian cooperation—one not circumscribed by subregional borders, but by shared opportunities and shared achievement.