The Centre for Social and Economic Progress (CSEP) hosted a seminar titled “Shocks and Strategies: Rethinking South Asia’s Trade in the Tariff Era” on Tuesday, September 9, 2025.

The seminar featured a discussion on the impact of US tariffs on South Asia, with perspectives from Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and India. The panellists were Mustafizur Rahman, Distinguished Fellow, Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD), Bangladesh; Vaqar Ahmad, Economist, Policy Expert & Former Civil Servant, Pakistan; Subhashini Abeysinghe, Research Director, Verité Research, Sri Lanka; Paras Kharel, Executive Director, South Asia Watch on Trade, Economics and Environment (SAWTEE), Nepal; and TG Srinivasan, Visiting Senior Fellow, CSEP, India. Sanjay Kathuria, Visiting Senior Fellow, CSEP, chaired the session.

The speakers focused on:

• The overall and sectoral impact of US tariffs on their country’s economy
• The policy response so far
• Any thinking of a new approach to trade and investment
• Implications for regional cooperation in South Asia

Chair

Sanjay Kathuria

Sanjay Kathuria is a Visiting Senior Fellow in the Growth, Finance and Development vertical at CSEP. He has a vast experience of more than 40 years and is recognised as a pre-eminent thinker and commentator on economic development, growth and integration in South Asia. His research interests and writings have focused on South Asia, economic growth and development, industrial policy and competitiveness, trade and globalisation, regional integration, the economics of small states, and gender issues, among others.

He is also co-founder of the Trade Sentinel, and Visiting Faculty, Ashoka University. He is also a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies at the National University of Singapore and a Global Fellow at the Wilson Centre in Washington, DC.

Earlier, Sanjay Kathuria was Senior Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi. He was a Lead Economist at the World Bank in Washington, DC, where he spent 27 years working on South Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Eastern Europe, including field assignments in New Delhi and Dhaka. Before joining the World Bank, he was a Fellow at the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations in New Delhi, from 1982 to 1992.

He holds a PhD in Economics from Oxford University as an Inlaks Scholar. He graduated from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi, and completed his Master’s at the Delhi School of Economics.

Apart from many books and reports published at the World Bank, his writings have featured in Foreign Policy, Hindustan Times, The Indian Express, The Wire, Daily FT (Sri Lanka), Business Standard, among others.

He is currently working on a new book on The Future of South Asia.

Speakers

Mustafizur Rahman 

Mustafizur Rahman is Distinguished Fellow at the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD), Dhaka where he was previously the Executive Director. Earlier Professor Rahman had taught at the University of Dhaka. Dr Rahman was educated at Moscow State University where he did his PhD, at Oxford University, UK and Warwick University, UK where he was a Post-Doctoral Fellow and at Yale University, USA where he was a Senior Fulbright Fellow. His recent works have focused on macro-trade-fiscal policies of Bangladesh, SDG implementation, LDC graduation challenges and regional and global integration of the Bangladesh economy. Dr Rahman has published widely in Bangladesh and abroad. He was a member of the Panel of Economists of various Five-Year Plans of Bangladesh and is a member of the Board of Trustees of BRAC University. Dr Rahman is a Series Editor of South Asia Economic Policy Studies published by Springer. He is a member of the White Paper Committee set up by the Interim Government.

Vaqar Ahmed 

Vaqar Ahmed is an award-winning economist, policy expert, and former civil servant with experience across the public and private sectors. He has led programmes for the World Bank, UNDP, and the Asian Development Bank, and serves on the Advisory Board of The Economist, as a Research Fellow with the Partnership for Economic Policy (PEP) Network, and as a Research and Evaluations Reviewer at RAND. He has taught at universities in the UK, Ireland, France, and Italy, and has been recognised internationally through distinctions such as the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Young Leaders Fellowship and a Canadian government award on research capturing fiscal responses to COVID-19. Dr Ahmed has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles and influential books with Oxford University Press and FES Germany. His insights are regularly featured by international media, including the BBC, Reuters, Bloomberg, Arab News, Nikkei Asia, and Dubai Eye. His expertise spans public finance, tax and trade reforms, governance, and private sector competitiveness, with a strong commitment to evidence-based policymaking at both national and global levels.

Subhashini Abeysinghe

Subhashini Abeysinghe is a renowned economist with expertise in trade policy, trade facilitation, global value chains, regional & multilateral trade agreements. Her latest research delves into China’s economic engagement in Sri Lanka and the geoeconomic competition between India and China in the Indian Ocean region. She has extensive experience working with the private sector to tackle barriers faced when engaging in international trade. She has been a long-standing member of the Export Development Committee and the Economic Policy Committee of the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce.

She has worked as a senior economist for the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce (CCC) for nearly ten years. She was a visiting lecturer at the Faculty of Graduate Studies of the University of Colombo and Sir John Kotalawela Defence University in Sri Lanka. She has a bachelor’s and master’s degree in economics from the University of Colombo and a master’s in international law and economics from the World Trade Institute, University of Bern, Switzerland.

Paras Kharel 

Paras Kharel is an economist engaged in research, capacity building and policy advocacy on international trade and development. He has been with South Asia Watch on Trade, Economics and Environment (SAWTEE)—a Kathmandu-based think tank—since 2007 and is currently its Executive Director. He has a PhD in Economics (University of Melbourne) with specialisation in international trade and applied microeconometrics. Kharel’s research and publications span regional integration, trade facilitation, gains from trade, application of structural gravity models, World Trade Organization issues, export competitiveness, aid for trade, linkages between trade policy and industrialisation, structural transformation, sustainable development, development finance, economic reforms, SMEs, trade and development issues of least-developed and landlocked countries, and migration and remittances. His publications include two edited volumes on South Asian cooperation/integration, and articles in peer-reviewed journals such as Review of International Economics, International Economics, East Asian Economic Review and Review of Development Economics. He has consulted for national and international organisations. He has also worked as a journalist.

T.G. Srinivasan

T.G. Srinivasan is a Senior Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Social and Economic Progress in New Delhi who has a career centred around trade, macroeconomics, and poverty reduction. Currently, his work is primarily oriented towards trade policy and economic relations within the South Asian region. He is a co-founder of the Trade Sentinel project, an innovative initiative aimed at developing early warning mechanisms for monitoring and analysing trade policy dynamics in South Asian countries.

Before joining the Centre, he has made significant contributions to the World Bank as a Senior Economist. During his tenure at the World Bank, he led poverty assessment work for countries like Jordan, Yemen, Nepal, and Bhutan. He also served as the country economist and played a crucial role in coordinating the World Bank’s global macroeconometric forecasting models. He worked in the Ministry of Finance in Oman, where he was involved in the development and implementation of the medium-term economic framework.

All content reflects the individual views of the speakers. The Centre for Social and Economic Progress (CSEP) does not hold an institutional view on any subject.

Please contact Gurmeet Kaur at GKaur@csep.org for general queries and Ayesha Manocha at AManocha@csep.org for media queries.