Improving Transnational Transport Corridors
In the OIC Member Countries: Concepts and Cases
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 Outward oriented accessible countries, who are in early stage of designing national
policies and institutional structures that encourage multi-modal transport services,
causing long transport times and high transportation costs;
 Less open and accessible countries, low income countries depending on a small
number of commodities, poor roads lead to transportation systems with low
efficiency;
 Land locked and Island countries, low-income countries depending on a small number
of commodities, poor roads lead to transportation systems with low efficiency.
2.5.2. Corridor and regional integration
Schürmann et al. (2002) refer to the role of transport infrastructure for regional development
as “one of the fundamental principles of regional economics”. With a recursive simulation
model of regional socio-economic development (Schürmann et al., 2002) try to validates the
not undisputed hypothesis that “regions with better access to locations of input materials and
markets will, ceteris paribus, be more productive, more competitive and hence more successful
than more remote and isolated regions”.
In the definitions of a corridor (section 2.2) integration is a key element. A successful
transportation corridor is often being followed by an integration that goes deeper than the
physical infrastructure. Srivastava (2011) and Hope and Cox (2015)), as discussed in Section
2.3, identify several stages until it reaches the stage of economic integration.
According to Vickerman (2002), economic corridors are widely viewed as major determinants
of economic integration. They increase intraregional trade and investment; play a pivotal role
in integrating economies across a region. They result in reducing the costs of transportation,
both within and across regions, improving international market access, increasing income, and
reducing poverty. According to De and Iyengar (2014) regional integration slows down if
countries are not interlinked through modern transportation and communication networks.
The three distinct features reported are:
(i) Economic corridors have always played a key role in integrating economies across a
region (Vickerman, 2002).
(ii) Economic corridors’ relation to welfare can be seen in both direct and indirect
terms (Venables, 2008)
(iii) Economic corridors have become important building blocks of regional economic
integration in an era of globalization (Kuroda et al., 2008).
De and Iyengar (2014) empirically analyze the linkages between economic corridors and
regional integration. They identify for South Asia the determinants of economic corridors.
They conclude that countries (and regions) with high incomes, strong institutions, good
governance, and more open economies are likely to have higher levels of regional
infrastructure. Indirectly, the estimated results of the baseline models suggest that efforts to
promote regional infrastructure have to address policy reform in a number of areas, and not be
limited to traditional measures to attract investment in infrastructure. According to De and