How do corridor development and border facilitation policies impact future container transport in inland South Asia? –A network simulation approach

The South Asia Subregional Economic Cooperation (SASEC) area experiences rapid economic growth with an abundant population, expecting to increase the cargo transport demand. However, weak infrastructure and cross-border systems could hinder the future growth of the area. We examine the impact of various logistics policies for efficient regional development, including corridor development and border facilitation. Particularly, we focus on the inland SASEC region, which has unique logistics environments because of complex geographical conditions, to gain implications on the relationship between landlocked regions and seaports. We extend the global logistics intermodal network simulation (GLINS) model, a stochastic assignment model to select transport routes and carriers to minimize the generalized cost, to the SASEC region, covering several regional divisions to gain implications that cannot be obtained by focusing only on South Asia. The simulation results indicate that the logistics weight in the SASEC will shift to the east, leading to overland connections with the vast markets of China and Southeast Asia. Furthermore, this study shows the feasibility of improving the connectivity of the three inland regions with the cooperation of ports, considering the future growth of cargo shipping demand and the importance of implementing corridor development and border facilitation together.