On May 27-28, 2015, the third international export forum took place in Bangkok, Thailand, this time under the title “Asian Regional Integration Revisited: New Perspectives for Old Institutions?”. It brought together 40 experts from the member countries of four sub-regional initiatives, namely the Pan-Beibu Gulf (PBG) Economic Cooperation, the Greater Tumen Initiative (GTI), the Greater Mekong Sub-Region (GMS) Economic Cooperation, and the South Asia Sub-Regional Economic Cooperation (SASEC), as well as from the ASEAN regional initiative.

Apart from enabling the exchange of the participants’ experiences with trade facilitation, cross-border and maritime cooperation, this year’s expert forum provided the attendees with the opportunity to discuss their approaches to sound institutional settings for inclusive and sustainable regional cooperation and integration in order to ensure that smaller countries, such as Cambodia or Mongolia, could equally benefit from recent developments.

Along the lines of regional integration, the expert forum did not only lead to a vivid exchange of existing knowledge, but rather strengthened the already laid foundation for a sustainable network and platform for dialogue expanding from Mongolia to Indonesia. By the establishment of working groups, the idea of mutual exchange and cooperation could be taken to the next level.