The South Asian Yearbook of Trade and Development is an annual series of publication launched by the Centre for Trade and Development (Centad) New Delhi, India in 2005, with the primary objective of articulating debates on development impacts of trade through rigorous policy research and analysis. The Yearbook is envisaged as a comprehensive collection of research papers, which attempt to reflect the South Asian perspectives at the multilateral and regional trade negotiations and provides policy suggestions for the trade negotiators and policy makers of the region.

The South Asian region is becoming increasingly prominent as an economic power house on the world stage particularly as India's economic prowess expands at a breath-taking pace....The value of this yearbook is that it examines the challenges the region is facing in this process of growth, and provides policy makers, business and civil society groups an opportunity to pause and reflect on how the potential in the region can be shaped for the betterment of all... commendable that Centas's tackled these challenges from a development perspective in this yearbook.

Prof. Yash Tandon
Executive Director, South Centre.

B.S. Chimni is Professor of International Law, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Till recently he was Vice-Chancellor, West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata, India. He has been a Visiting Professor at the International Center for Comparative Law and Politics, Tokyo University; Fulbright Visiting Scholar at Harvard Law School; Visiting Fellow at Max Planck Institute for Comparative and Public International Law, Heidelberg; Visiting Fellow at Centre for Research in Arts, Social Sciences and Humanity, Cambridge University; and Visiting Scholar at Refugee Studies Center, York University, Canada. He was a member of the Academic Advisory Committee of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees from 1996-2000. In March 2006 he delivered the eighth Grotius Lecture at the Centennial Meeting of the American Society of International Law held in Washington, USA. His publications include International Commodity Agreements: A Legal Study (1987), International Law and World Order: A Critique of Contemporary Approaches (1993), (editor) International Refugee Law: A Reader (2000), and (co-editor with Antony Anghie, Karin Mickelson and Obiora Okafor) The Third World and International Order: Law Politics and Globalization (2004). His most recent publication on WTO issues is “WTO, Democracy and Development: A View from the South”, Journal of World Trade, Vol. 40(1) (2006). His areas of research interest include third world approaches to international law (TWAIL), international economic law and international refugee law. He is one of the General Editors of the Asian Yearbook of International Law.

Saman Kelegama is the Executive Director of the Institute of Policy Studies (IPS), Colombo, Sri Lanka. He is a Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences of Sri Lanka and was the President of the Sri Lanka Economic Association (SLEA) during 1999-2003. He has published extensively on Sri Lankan economic issues in both local and international journals. His latest books are: Development under Stress: Sri Lankan Economy in Transition (2006), Contemporary Economic Issues: Sri Lanka in the Global Context (2006), South Asia after the Quota System: The Impact of the MFA Phase-Out (2005), Economic Policy in Sri Lanka: Issues and Debates (2004), and Ready-Made Garment Industry in Sri Lanka: Facing the Global Challenge (2004). He is the co-editor of the South Asia Economic Journal (Sage Publication) and a Governing Board Director in the South Asia Centre for Policy Studies. He received his Doctorate (D. Phil.) from the University of Oxford, UK and Masters from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, India.

Mustafizur Rahman is an economist by training. He is Research Director at the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD), a leading civil society think tank in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and is a Professor of Economics at the Faculty of Business Studies, University of Dhaka. He was educated at the Moscow State University, from where he did his PhD in Development Economics. He subsequently carried out research at the Oxford University, UK, where he was a Visiting Post-doctoral Fellow (1994), and at the Yale University, USA, where he was affiliated as a Senior Fulbright Fellow (2003). Recently, he was a Visiting Fellow at University of Warwick, UK. Professor Rahman has published extensively in reputed journals both in Bangladesh and abroad, and has authored a number of books. He has collaborated with a number of international organisations including UN-ESCAP, UNDP, World Bank, ADB and Commonwealth Secretariat. Professor Rahman’s current research interests include Bangladesh’s external sector performance and its determinants, regional cooperation and economic integration in South Asia, and implications of ongoing negotiations in the WTO for the economies of the least developed countries.

Linu Mathew Philip, is currently Research Officer at Centad, an agricultural economist by profession he had been a Faculty at University of Delhi. He has served as member of various committees of Government of India, currently member of Export Committee on normally traded commodities under the Biodiversity Authority of India. He is also associated with the Technical working group on Buffer Stocking for Government of India for the last Five Year Plan. He has extensively worked on many domestic agricultural and international trade issues.