ECO Regional Planning Council meeting starts on March 3

The four-day meeting of Regional Planning Council (RPC) of the Economic Co-operation Organisation (ECO) would start here on Monday, sources told Business Recorder on Saturday. They said the 18th meeting of the RPC is scheduled to be held here from March 3-6.
The meeting, held annually, focuses on the policies and programmes of the organisation and evolves the calendar of events. Sources said the plans and programmes were drawn up in accordance with the principles and objectives of regional co-operation as laid down in the Treaty of Izmir, Turkey, as well as policy guidelines and directives of the Council of Ministers (COM).
At the RPC meeting, they said, seven committees on priority areas of co-operation and service directorates would hold discussion on various activities of the organisation. They said the four-day deliberations of the RPC and its working committees would cover important issues in trade and investment, transport and communications, energy and minerals, agriculture and environment, industry and tourism.
The participants would also discuss the ECO's specialised agencies and relations with regional and international organisations, they maintained. They said the RPC played an important role in carrying out the ECO activities. It has technical committees to assist it in completing the task. The plans and programmes, framed by RPC, would be submitted to the 18th Council of Ministers, which would also be held in autumn in Pakistan, they said.
They said the decision of 17th RPC meeting that each member state of the ECO should host at least two meetings in a year would be deliberated in the meeting. To date, only Pakistan and Turkey have conveyed their willingness to host one of the events and so far only Pakistan, Turkey and Turkmenistan have nominated their focal points.
They said the decisions of 17th meeting of COM, held on October 20, 2007 in Herat, Afghanistan, would also be reviewed in the RPC meeting, which included reactivation of the ECO Chamber of Commerce and Industry, trade agreement, establishment of a reinsurance company, transit transport framework agreement (TTFA). They said the issues of interconnection of power systems of the ECO member states and fund for reconstruction of Afghanistan would also come under discussion in the meeting.