LEADER 03605oam 22005775 450 001 9910827596903321 005 20170929120836.0 010 $a1-4648-0974-7 024 7 $a10.1596/978-1-4648-0973-6 035 $a(CKB)3710000001390109 035 $a(MiAaPQ)EBC4868578 035 $a(The World Bank)210973 035 $a(US-djbf)210973 035 $a(EXLCZ)993710000001390109 100 $a20020129d2017 uf 0 101 0 $aeng 135 $aurcn||||||||| 181 $ctxt$2rdacontent 182 $cc$2rdamedia 183 $acr$2rdacarrier 200 10$aSouth Asia's Turn : $ePolicies to Boost Competitiveness and Create the Next Export Powerhouse /$fGladys Lopez-Acevedo 210 1$aWashington, D.C. :$cThe World Bank,$d2017. 215 $a1 online resource (178 pages) 225 1 $aSouth Asia Development Matters 311 $a1-4648-0973-9 320 $aIncludes bibliographical references at the end of each chapters. 327 $aPart 1. South Asia's competitiveness challenge and opportunity -- The region's competitiveness potential remains largely unrealized -- Improving competitiveness requires raising productivity rather than keeping costs low -- Part 2. Productivity performance: firms and linkages -- Business environment challenges continue to weigh on firm performance -- Productivity-boosting agglomeration economies are underleveraged -- Limited success in linking to global value chains -- Firm capabilities are constrained -- Part 3. The way forward -- Potential for increased growth through policy reforms -- Need for greater emphasis on trade policies, spatial policies, and firm capabilities. 330 3 $aSouth Asia has a huge need to create more and better jobs for a growing population especially in the manufacturing industries where it is underperforming as compared to East Asia. The report examines three critical and relatively understudied drivers of competitiveness: -Economies of agglomeration: firms and workers accrue benefits from locating close together in cities or clusters through urbanization and localization. -Participation in global value chains: stronger competitive pressures weed out least productive firms while others improve by gaining access to new knowledge and better inputs. -Firm capabilities: in order to operate close to what would be considered optimum efficiency levels given the prevailing factor prices and thus employ South Asia's abundant labor. The report shows that South Asia has great untapped competitiveness potential. Realizing this potential would require the governments in the region to pursue second generation trade policy reforms for firms to better contribute to and benefit from global value chains (e.g. facilitating imports for exporters), to facilitate the development of industrial clusters in secondary cities (cheaper and less congested than the metros) as well as to deploy policies to improve the capabilities of firms. 410 0$aWorld Bank e-Library. 606 $aAgribusiness 606 $aApparel 606 $aExports 606 $aLabor 606 $aProductivity 607 $aSouth Asia$xEconomic conditions 615 4$aAgribusiness 615 4$aApparel 615 4$aExports 615 4$aLabor 615 4$aProductivity 676 $a338.954 700 $aLopez-Acevedo$b Gladys$01157140 702 $aLopez Acevedo$b Gladys 702 $aMedvedev$b Denis 702 $aPalmade$b Vincent 801 0$bDJBF 801 1$bDJBF 906 $aBOOK 912 $a9910827596903321 996 $aSouth Asia's Turn$94076531 997 $aUNINA