<p>With the Tenth WTO Ministerial Conference in Nairobi, the efforts for trade liberalisation and strengthening of multilateral trading arrangement have come to a full circle. What started in 1995 with graduation from GATT to WTO has come to a point where several challenges for multilateralism are clearly discernible. As a result, it is not surprising that the usual excitement for WTO ministerial meeting is missing this time. The demand to close the Doha Development Round has triggered a deep sense of pessimism across low income and other developing countries. They have also been left outside the Mega-Regionals groupings, which have emerged in all parts of the world. Therefore, lowering of ambition at WTO is a direct outcome of these arrangements.</p>
<p>Signing of Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is an unprecedented development in the annals of the economic history of the world. Along with TPP another three mega regionals, viz. TTIP, RCEP and FTAAP, have made significant headway in their negotiations, and are likely to be formed in the coming years. These four regional groupings are distinct from those of other existing regional grouping in terms of their content, scope and impact on the global economy. There is discussion about another four mega regionals namely, EU-ASEAN, EU-Japan, China-Japan-Korea FTA and Pacific Alliance, which have got similar features to be treated as mega regionals. UN (2015) has treated Trade in Services (TISA) and Tripartite Free Trade Agreement (TFTA) as mega regionals which can have a major hold over the global economic activities in the recent years.</p>
<p>Mega regionals have significant command over several important economic activities in the world economy. Their contributions are felt in several frontiers of economic activities including GDP, FDI, Foreign Exchange Reserves, Saving Ratios, Gross Fixed Capital Formation, etc. among others. In several mega regionals, simultaneous presence of members from developed and emerging countries are seen, stressing on different dimensions of their economic engagement. In many such cases, developed countries have shown their strong base in several macro-economic activities but lacking growth whereas emerging countries have shown their surging growth in these activities.</p>
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