南亚各国独立以来面临的严峻经济形势与不断演变的区域地缘政治，加之世界其他地区特别是欧洲、东南亚一体化的示范效应，促使以印度为主体的南亚地区在20世纪80年代开启了区域经济合作的进程。经过多年的发展，目前，南亚的区域经济合作在三个层面上取得不同程度的进展。其中，双边经济合作是区域经济合作的主要表现，区域、次区域经济合作则起到了补充作用。南亚区域经济合作的水平较低、结构失衡，合作的形式大于内容，各国的离心倾向严重，这些都使南亚区域经济合作在未来只能绕过一体化议题，在部分技术性领域寻求突破，实现更符合南亚地区实际情况的发展。
The severe economic situation and unstable regional geopolitics condition South Asian Countries faced since their independence and the demonstration effect of the integration of Europe and Southeast Asia spurred South Asian leaders to begin the process of regional economic cooperation in 1980s. After many years of development，the regional economic cooperation of South Asia has achieved different degrees of progress in three levels. Among them，the bilateral cooperation is the main body of South Asian regional economic cooperation while the regional and sub regional economic cooperation played supplementary roles. The level of South Asian regional economic cooperation is low and its structure is imbalanced. It is also lack of substantive content and faces a strong centrifugal tendency. In the future，the regional economic cooperation of South Asia should be bypassed the topic of economic integration and sought a breakthrough in some technical fields to achieve the development which suited for the actual situation of South Asia more.
