Assessing the agricultural trade complementarity of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations countries

Abstract

This paper aims to investigate the agricultural trade complementarity of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries on the global agricultural market over the period 1997–2015 by employing the trade complementarity index (TCI), the export similarity index (ESI), and Spearman’s rank correlation coefficients for competitiveness indicators. The results indicate that: (i) the ASEAN countries’ agricultural export patterns are weakly complementary in matching the regional import demands; while (ii) they are relatively complementary in exporting agricultural products to the world market; (iii) the countries’ agricultural competitiveness patterns are more affected by and benefited from the global integration than the regional integration; and (iv) the countries, moreover, tend to become more substitutable over time. The research results suggest that the ASEAN countries should cooperate and utilise the internal markets to enhance the competitiveness and predominantly focus on the external global markets.