Asian Countries

Commonwealth Countries of Asia : Few Facts

There are 8 Commonwealth Countries in the Asian region. All of them have been members of the WTO since 1995.

In terms of Human Development Index (HDI) ranks, while Bangladesh and Maldives are categorized as Least Developed Countries and Singapore is a developed country, the rest five countries are developing nations.

The trade to GDP ratio pointing towards the openness of trade (export & import of goods and services) has huge variation between countries of this region with Singapore holding highest of 431.8% Trade – GDP ratio and Pakistan at 33.1% is the lowest. Average for all the countries is 143.14% with coefficient of variance of 102.1%.

Most of the countries in this region have annual GDP growth rates in the range of 5-8% with the exception of Brunei Darussalam (0.4%).

Service sector is the major contributor to GDP for most nations of this region. However, contribution from Agriculture sector to GDP of South Asian countries is considerable falling between 16 – 20%.

Textiles and related products are the common export item for all the nations except Brunei and Maldives. Again, with exception of Brunei, all other countries are importers of crude oil, petroleum and petroleum products.

With the exception of Singapore (about 2% in merchandise and services trade), India (about 1% merchandise and 2% in services), and Malaysia (both merchandise and services recorded about 1%), most of Commonwealth countries of Asia recorded a negligible share in world trade.

Table 1: WTO, Trade-GDP Ratio and HDI Status of the Asian Commonwealth Members

^{*the ratio is taken for the period of 2003-05 unless otherwise mentioned.}