Economic corridors: Key to sustainable growth
Mint takes a closer look at the idea and the benefit it offers. An economic corridor, a term coined by the Asian Development Bank, is an integrated network of infrastructure—including rail, road, and port—within a defined geographical area that connect various economic hubs. They link centres of production with centres of consumption.
Corridors can be developed either within a country (Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor, or Bengaluru-Mumbai Economic Corridor) or across nations (IMEC, or China’s Belt and Road Initiative). However, they are not mere transport connections. They play a much larger role by transforming the regions the corridor passes through.
Plenty. To start with, they cut the time and costs of logistics. They enable the emergence of industrial clusters along their path, and this can catalyse economic growth.
In fact, some hold that such corridors can develop regions which otherwise would have remained backward—by creating employment in these regions and improving the standards of living. According to a World Bank study, China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), once fully implemented, will reduce travel time along the corridor by 12%, improve trade by 2.7%, increase incomes by up to 3.4% and lift 7.6 million people from extreme poverty. The 6,400-km Silk Road linking the East and West for over 1,400 years may have been the first.
Today, other than BRI, there is the Greater Mekong Subregion Economic Corridor that connects Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, and Myanmar; another connecting Almaty in Kazakhstan and Bishkek in Kyrgyzstan; and China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. Recently, the total investment under BRI crossed $1 trillion. But there are signs China is slowing down on BRI.
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