REGIONAL COOPERATION AND ECONOMIC INTEGRATION

trade and the level of participation of each country in the Region in international trade
relationships. Then, we conduct comparative statistical analysis of trade flows between
the “neighbors”, for the years 2007 or 2006, depending on the availability of data. Before
presenting a few conclusions concerning the potential for cooperation in the region of
Southeast Europe, we finally concentrate on the geographical concentration of imports and
exports, especially in the Republic of Macedonia, in the time period 2000-2008.
1. Country-by-country analysis: level of trade
CEFTA-2006 TRADE COOPERATION
A SEE country by country international trade analysis is conducted from two separate
angels. Firstly, each country’s imports and exports are compared to its GDP, which means
that imports, exports and trade are analyzed as percentage of GDP for each country in the
region, in order to check whether or not a country is globalizing, Secondly, in order to
compare the openness to the world, the imports and exports of each country in SEE are
compared to world imports and exports.
Data for imports, exports and GDP (all in current US dollars), as well for imports, exports
and trade as percentages of GDP in 2006, are obtained from the World Bank’s World
Development Indicators (2008). The major problem with this data is the “lack of intraregional
network”. One explanation for this could be that some of the countries have only
been independent for couple of years and until recently failed to provide trade statistics
according to the Harmonized System or Combined Nomenclature (Atanassova 2006, p.
174). For instance, since Montenegro formally declared its independence from Serbia and
Montenegro on 3 June 2006, the data was not incorporated in the official source so it was
not possible to conduct the analysis separately for Montenegro.
Table 1: GDP, Trade, Exports and Imports of good and services in 2006
in the region of SEE
Countries
Exports Imports Exports Imports Trade
GDP
(% of (% of
(mill. of $) (mill.
(mill.
(% of
%
%
of $)
of $)
GDP) GDP) GDP)
Albania 9098 2297 0.02 4500 0.03 25 49 42.3
Bosnia &
Herzegovina
12255 4496 0.03 8187 0.06 25 47 86.6
Croatia 42925 21454 0.15 24678 0.17 48 57 74.2
Macedonia 6217 2998 0.02 4258 0.03 50 68 99.1
Montenegro - - - - - - - -
Serbia 1) 31989 - - - - 27 47 61.3
WORLD 48461854 14635235 100.0 14403234 100.0 30 29.7 49.9
Source: The World Bank (2008). World Development Indicators, Tables: 4.2; 4.8; 4.14; 6.1.
Note: 1) Data for Kosovo is incorporated
The conclusions deriving from the analysis of data given in Table 1 are as follow:
1) Imports may be considered a function of nation’s productivity, measured by its GDP,
since imports exceed exports in case of all SEE countries (in case of Albania it exceeds
1.96 times; in case of Bosnia and Herzegovina 1.82 times; for Croatia 1.15 times and
for Macedonia 1.42 times). According to the explanation provided by Naghshopour, this
excess of imports over exports is a “wealth effect”, which might occur whenever “a nation
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