GTI 회원국의 무역원활화 현황 및 역내 협력방안 (A Proposal to Facilitate Trade in the Greater Tumen Region)

Abstract

Korean Abstract: 최근 중국 동북 3성, 러시아 연해주의 발전에 대한 국가적 관심이 높아짐에 따라 광역두만개발계획(GTI)이 동북아 지역 내의 주요 지역협력 채널로 부상하고 있다. 우리 정부로서는 GTI를 통해 유라시아 이니셔티브 추진의 초석을 마련할 수 있으며 장기적으로 북한의 나진·선봉 지역 개발 등 통일을 준비하는 기회로 활용할 수 있다는 측면에서 적극적인 참여가 요구되는 실정이다. 이러한 배경하에 이 연구는 광역두만강 유역의 개발을 위한 한 단계로서 GTI 회원국의 무역활성화 방안을 제시하였다. 그동안 광역두만강 유역의 무역원활화에 대한 기존 연구가 실증분석 등과 같은 정치(精緻)한 분석에 근거를 두지 않은 채 정책제안을 제시해온 반면, 이 보고서는 실증분석과 현지조사 등에 근거하여 정책제안을 도출하였다는 측면에서 기존 연구와 차별화된다.

최근 GTI 회원국의 역내무역집중도는 아세안 등의 주요 경제권과 달리 감소추세를 보였다. 또한 운송기반시설과 무역원활화 수준은 국토면적이나 인구수에 비해 세계적 수준에 미치지 못하거나 역내국간 격차가 심한 것으로 나타났다. 따라서 GTR의 경우 이제 시장 주도의 무역이 심화되는 기능적 차원의 경제협력에 맡기기보다 역내국간 무역원활화 조치와 같은 경제협력의 심화를 통해 상호무역을 촉진시킬 필요가 있다. GTI 회원국의 무역원활화 조치가 GTR의 무역에 미치는 영향을 실증분석한 결과, 양국의 무역량을 증대시키기 위해서는 자국과 상대국 모두 무역원활화 수준을 함께 개선시켜야 하는 것으로 나타났다. 특히 정책(규제) 관련 변수 중에서는 물류인프라, 통관행정, 물류서비스 역량 순으로, 물류성과 분야에서는 적시성, 국제운송, 물류추적 순으로 GTI 회원국의 무역에 영향을 미치는 것으로 분석되었다.

English Abstract: The Greater Tumen Initiative (GTI) is an intergovernmental cooperation mechanism with four member countries, all in Northeast Asia: China, Mongolia, Republic of Korea and the Russian Federation. Because of the lackluster performance of the GTI in the past, member countries have shown little interest in actively participating in GTI. Only recently has more attention been directed towards GTI by member countries, as the growth potential of the Russian Far East and the Northeast provinces of China were realized by policy makers. Korea also has been actively participating in GTI activities as the GTI can be a stepping stone for pushing ahead with the Park administration’s Eurasia Initiative. Furthermore, developing the Greater Tumen Region (GTR) provides an opportunity for the two Koreas to prepare for eventual unification. Although there exists some studies in trade facilitation in the GTR, little work has been done using empirical methodology along with analysis based on survey results. To our knowledge, our proposal represents the only work using both empirical and descriptive approaches to analyze trade facilitation issues of GTR.

Unlike other economic cooperation mechanisms such as ASEAN or EU, the inter-regional trade concentration ratio has fallen recently, implying that there is room for economic integration in the GTR. Also, we find that some GTI member countries have poor transportation infrastructure and lack appropriate trade facilitation measures. The current status of implementation of the trade facilitation in the GTR thus highlights the necessity of economic cooperation, to facilitate trade in the region. The empirical result of the proposal implies that trade partners, both the exporting country and the importing country, should improve their trade facilitation measures to fully benefit from trade. We considered a set of policy variables and logistic performance variables that affect the volume of trade of GTI member countries. We find that among the policy variables, logistical infrastructure has the greatest impact on trade, followed by custom procedures and logistics service capacity. Among logistic performance variables, timeliness has the most impact on trade, followed by international shipments and tracking and tracing.

We complement our empirical analysis by conducting interviews with customs and traders working in the GTR. The 4-steps custom procedures are common to the member countries; document preparation & custom declaration, physical inspection, duty collection, out approval. However, required documents and other regulations for each step varied among the GTI member countries. For instance, the e-payment system is not fully implemented in the Russian Federation and Mongolia while Korea and China allow duty payments through the Internet. GTI member countries also had issues in common regarding custom transparency and high levels of physical inspection rates, hampering the efficient movements of cross-border trade.

The level of implementation of trade facilitation measures varied in many aspects. Korea was the only country to fully implement paperless trade. Other countries have partially introduced paperless trade, but for some countries the partial implementation has actually become burdensome to traders as the legal framework has not changed accordingly. Advance ruling is a measure that could help prevent disputes of classification and issues related to valuation, but Mongolia has yet to introduce such a policy. Also, even though risk management, AEO and AEO MRA are recommended for countries with high physical inspection rates, these trade facilitation measures were also not fully implemented for some countries.

Note: Downloadable document is in Korean.

Keywords: Greater Tumen Initiative,Greater Tumen Region (GTR), Trade facifitation