Sri Lanka, Oct. 27 -- The latest Regional Economic Outlook (REO) for Asia and Pacific, launched by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) last Friday, highlights a profound and ongoing reconfiguration of global value chains that offer significant, though challenging, opportunities for economies like Sri Lanka.
The report confirms that recent global trade tensions and sharply higher effective US tariffs have spurred a tariff-induced trade diversion across the region, as companies seek to circumvent new trade barriers.
While the full impact is still unfolding, IMF's analysis of the 2018-2019 US-China trade tensions reveals a consistent pattern: production has relocated from highly taxed source countries to other economies in the region with...