Content area
Full Text
Mark Goh: Department of Decision Sciences, Faculty of Business Administration, National University of Singapore, Singapore
Argus Ang: Department of Decision Sciences, Faculty of Business Administration, National University of Singapore, Singapore
ACKNOWLEDGMENT: The authors wish to acknowledge the useful contributions of the anonymous referees whose comments and suggestions have considerably improved this paper.
1. Introduction
Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam aggressively opened their economies to international trade in the late 1980s. With virtually untapped markets and abundant natural resources, they began to court foreign multinational corporations (MNCs), who are always in constant search of new export markets and lower cost production environments. However, the war legacy of Indochina has left these countries ill equipped with the needed logistics infrastructure to support the rapidly rising trade and investment. An efficient logistics infrastructure increases a nation's competitiveness and its ability to attract foreign direct investment (FDI) (Fawcett et al., 1995). If a nation lacks a reliable network of dependable transportation, telecommunications, warehousing and other related infrastructure, firms will be restricted from designing an efficient logistics strategy for the distribution of finished goods. Razzaque (1997) has already cited poor logistics support facilities as a major reason for Bangladesh's futile efforts in attracting foreign investment as opposed to South Africa's ability to attract FDI due to her advanced logistics system (Cillers and Nagel, 1994; Nollet et al., 1994). For MNCs and other foreign investors, the inadequacy of a region's logistics infrastructure, bureaucratic trade regulations and cumbersome customs procedures collectively limit corporate profit. In many cases, these factors have even been known to increase the hidden cost of operations.
Generally, in this paper, secondary research is employed for the purpose of data collection and collation. Country profiles from reliable sources like the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) and Dataconsult, regional studies from the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), World Bank, the Secretariat Office of the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS), and country statistical yearbooks provide most of the statistical information. The reliance on published secondary data sources inevitably means that the available data might not be as current as desired. To this end, some statistical data are offered based on the authors' existing knowledge of the region. Collectively, the information collected may supplement the existing literature, both...