BIMSTEC Course on Negotiating Regional Trade Agreements for Trade in Times of Crisis and Pandemic

Yann Duval is currently Chief of Trade Policy and Facilitation Section at UN-ESCAP, the regional branch of the United Nations Secretariat for Asia and the Pacific.

Over the past 20 years, Dr. Duval has conducted research and delivered technical assistance and advisory services on trade policy and facilitation throughout Asia and the Pacific, including on the WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement. He spearheaded the development of the Asia-Pacific Research and Training Network on Trade (ARTNeT), as well as, interalia, the creation of the ESCAP-World Bank Trade Cost Database, the UN Global Survey on Trade Facilitation and Paperless Trade Implementation and the online Trade Intelligence and Negotiation Adviser (TINA).

Dr. Duval was also instrumental in the development of the United Nations Network of Experts for Paperless Trade and Transport in Asia and the Pacific (UNNExT) and the negotiation of a new intergovernmental Framework Agreement on Facilitation of Cross-Border Paperless Trade in Asia and the Pacific, a UN treaty entered into force in February 2021.

Prior to joining the UN, he held faculty positions at the Asian Institute of Technology and Washington State University, USA.

Prof. Katrin Kuhlmann, Visiting Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Centre and President and Founder, New Markets Lab, who is also the lead author of the Handbook. Her areas of research and expertise include international economic law, law and development, regional trade agreements and comparative economic law.  She is also a member of the Trade Advisory Committee on Africa at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR).  In addition to practicing trade and corporate law at two international law firms, she spent six years as a trade negotiator with the USTR’s Office, where she focused on WTO accession negotiations, regional trade, non-tariff measures, intellectual property rights, and agricultural issues. She holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School and a BA in Economics from Creighton University. Prof. Kuhlman is the leading author of the course reading and recorded video lectures for the course.

Dr Ganeshan Wignaraja is a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies (ISAS) at the National University of Singapore. He is also a Senior Research Associate at the Overseas Development Institute in London. He holds visiting appointments as an Adjunct Senior Fellow at Research and Information Systems for Developing Countries in New Delhi and a Senior Visiting Fellow at the Pathfinder Foundation in Colombo.

Dr Wignaraja is an international development expert, policy advisor and researcher. In a career spanning over the last 30 years in the United Kingdom and Asia, he has held senior roles in international organisations (including the Director of Research at the Asian Development Bank Institute in Tokyo, Chief Programme Officer at the Commonwealth Secretariat in London and a Visiting Scholar at the International Monetary Fund in Washington DC), government-linked institutions (including Executive Director of the Lakshman Kadirgamar Institute of International Relations and Strategic Studies in Colombo and a Member of the Monetary Policy Consultative Committee of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka) and the private sector (including Global Head of Trade and Competitiveness at Maxwell Stamp PLC in London).

Dr Wignaraja’s expertise covers macroeconomic analysis, trade and regional integration, foreign aid and infrastructure, and the Sustainable Development Goals. He has published 20 books on these topics and successfully led teams to deliver complex projects for aid agencies and governments in over 30 countries in Asia, Africa, Europe and Latin America.

He has a DPhil in Economics from Oxford University and a BSc in Economics from the London School of Economics.

Ms. Epps has more than 18 years' experience as an academic, legal advisor and negotiator; including seven years as a senior advisor in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFAT) Trade Law Unit. During this time, she acted as the lead legal counsel for New Zealand’s negotiating team in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations.

Professor Selim Raihan is a Professor at the Department of Economics, University of Dhaka, Bangladesh and the Executive Director of the South Asian Network on Economic Modeling (SANEM). He holds a PhD from the University of Manchester, UK.

Professor Raihan is the Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the University of Manchester, UK. He is an alumnus of Harvard University’s program on “Cutting Edge of Development Thinking”. He possesses vast expertise in empirical research on international trade, economic growth, poverty, labour market, macroeconomic policies, political economy, and climate change issues. He has worked quite extensively on applied economics, especially assessing impacts of trade and economic policies, using country-specific and global Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) models, and micro and macro-econometric modelling and estimation techniques. He has a long experience in teaching international trade, economic modelling, quantitative economics, econometrics, development economics, and poverty dynamics. He has more than 15 years of experience in conducting international and national training programmes on economic modelling in various countries, including Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Mongolia, Senegal, Sri Lanka, and Thailand. He has published several journal articles, books, book chapters and working papers.

Professor Raihan is the editor of Thinking Aloud – a monthly digest from SANEM. He regularly writes columns in leading English and Bengali dailies in Bangladesh. He contributed extensively to the preparation of the Sixth and Seventh Five-year National Plans of Bangladesh. He led a research team to prepare the SDG Financing Strategy: Bangladesh Perspective -a flagship publication of the Planning Commission of Bangladesh. He has worked for several national and international organizations including the Asian Development Bank, the World Bank, UNDP, UNESCAP, UNCTAD, IFPRI, the Commonwealth Secretariat, FAO, European Commission, ILO, IDRC, DFID, etc. He has led and has also been a member of a number of regional and international research projects on trade and regional integration issues. Also, he has been working on the political economy analysis of economic issues. The most recent ones are the studies on Bangladesh Institutional Diagnostic, which are prepared under his leadership and supervision, for the DFID, UK.

Sven’s work aims at bridging the gaps existing between Government’s trade and digital trade aspirations reflected in strategies & policies and development partners’ value for money and impact expectations. He achieves this by advising and guiding Government leaders, donors and regional organizations in South East Asia (ASEAN) and the Pacific (PIFS), mostly for Australian DFAT and UN agencies. After a 13-year career as a trade adviser for UNCTAD, he has advised several Government agencies (DFAT, GIZ, DANIDA), in particular in Bhutan, Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu in accelerating their economic transformation, digital transition, digital trade adoption.

Most recent assignments:

Team Leader, Pacific Regional E-commerce Strategy and Roadmap (PIFS, DFAT)

Lead Adviser, Project on Strengthening an Inclusive Enabling Environment for e-Commerce in Cambodia, Myanmar, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu (DFAT)

Lead Adviser, Economic Governance Infrastructure Policy Program formulation, 2021 (DFAT)

E-commerce Counsel, Development of a Work Plan for the ASESAN E-commerce Agreement (for ASEAN, DFAT-funded)

Team Leader, Bhutan Trade Strategy 2021-2026, Ministry of Economic Affairs, Bhutan

Team Leader, Cambodia Trade Strategy 2019-2023, Ministry of Commerce, Cambodia

Lead Adviser, eTrade Readiness Assessments Programme, 2016-2019 (UNCTAD)

Mr. Prabir De is Professor at the Research and Information System for Developing Countries (RIS). He is also the Coordinator of ASEAN-India Centre (AIC) at RIS. De works in the field of international economics and has research interests in international trade and development. He was a visiting Fellow of the Asian Development Bank Institute (ADBI), Tokyo; and visiting Senior Fellow of United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP), Bangkok. He has been conducting policy research for the Government of India and several international organizations. De has a Ph.D. in Economics from the Jadavpur University, Calcutta. He has contributed several research papers in international journals and written books on trade and development. He is the managing editor of South Asia Economic Journal, published by Sage.