An inquiry into the analysis of the Transport & Logistics Sectors’ Role in Economic Development

Abstract Economic development is a process in which an economy converts itself from one where the community saves and invests at low levels to another where these variables are turned into higher values. Putting it in other words, more than this rather rudimentary approach, economic development can be described as a process of structural change of the economy. We can describe it as a process in which sectoral composition of the economy as well as relative sizes of the sectors undergo a serious transformation. Therefore, there appears a change in the structure of sectoral balance in the economy as some sectors resume a leading role while some new sectors may appear perhaps in parallel with the new external dynamics. In this sense economic development is an uneven process. If we dwell on this structuralist paradigm a development policy should aim at creating strategic imbalances. In this paradigm of development / growth some sectors appear to be critically strategic. The selection process of these sectors and the data required to analyse them the methodology we intend to refer is based on inter-industrial analysis. The key sectors are transport and logistics and those among the commodity-producing sectors with high linkage factors to these two strategic sectors. One of the best methods of analysing the interaction between the sectors concerned might be to analyse the spillover effects of the selected sector on others which we have tried earlier. However due mainly to methodological reasons and the lack of affiliated data we have failed to employ our model. Learning our lesson by this experience we aim to (1) sketch the domain of the sectors concerned and (2) specify the data required to carry out the analysis of the model.