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The failure of newly independent Central Asian countries to diversify exports after the Soviet Union’s collapse is attributed to high trade costs, either because these countries are landlocked or due to border delays and regulatory obstacles. This paper estimates the impact of the high costs of exporting in Central Asia using a structural gravity model with trade cost variables from the trade facilitation indicators of the Corridor Performance Measurement and Monitoring dataset. The results demonstrate that uncertainty in the time to export has a strong negative impact on exports of goods in five Central Asian countries. Moreover, time-sensitive, perishable agricultural products are confirmed to be strongly impacted by uncertainty in export time, while textile and apparel commodities are highly sensitive, relative to other commodities, to high costs to export. The findings suggest that policies aimed not only at reducing time and costs but also at creating an enabling and predictable trading environment could significantly boost cross-border trade, promote export diversification, and foster economic growth in the region.

This study examines the relationship between international trade and exchange rate uncertainty in Eswatini. The specific objectives were to establish the nature of relationship between import and exchange rate uncertainty, relationship between export trade and exchange rate uncertainty, and the causal relationship between import, export and exchange rate uncertainty. Annual data ranging from 1972 to 2018 were collected and analyzed using Engle–Granger cointegration and Granger causality techniques. Exchange rate uncertainty is measured using symmetric GARCH (1,1) model of the nominal exchange rate. Estimates from the augmented Dickey–Fuller (ADF) unit root test indicate that all the data were stationary at first difference. The cointegration results show evidence of long-run relationship between import and exchange rate uncertainty. The results also show that export is significantly related to exchange rate uncertainty in the long-run. Granger causality results evince the existence of a unidirectional causality from export to exchange rate uncertainty, and a bidirectional causal relationship between import and exchange rate uncertainty. The magnitude of influence of exchange rate uncertainty, however, is greater than that of import. The study recommends amongst others that monetary authorities should develop strategies that will stimulate demand for local goods so as to boost the influence of import on exchange rate uncertainty.