Prime Minister's Advisor on Finance Dr Salman Shah has said on Tuesday that Saarc Development Fund (SDF) will serve as an umbrella financial institution for all Saarc projects and programmes.
"The Fund with its own permanent secretariat will comprise three distinct windows - social window, infrastructure window and economic window", he added. Salman stated this while presenting a welcome address at the inaugural session of first Saarc Finance Ministers Conference here on Tuesday.
He said Saarc finance ministers agreed that the South Asia Poverty Fund should function within the South Asia Development Fund, which would be reconstituted as the SDF.
He said Pakistan was fully committed to such equitable and participative regional up-gradation and willing to play a proactive role in the furtherance of our collective goals. In case of Saarc, he said, there was tremendous potential that lies untapped.
It is estimated that intra-regional trade as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2003 stood at nine percent for Europe and Central Asia, four percent for East Asia and the Pacific, but only one percent for South Asia.
It is hoped that the recent ratification of South Asian Free Trade Agreement (Safta) by all member states will be the catalyst that changes the statistics. In a similar vein intra-regional capital flows have to be accelerated, he added.
The advisor said intra-regional investment flows were small in South Asia, of the 1,232 Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) projects in South Asia during 2002 to 2004, only 31 or 2.5 percent were intra-regional in origin.
"We as a region are to gain competitive advantage in an increasingly competitive world", he said, adding: "We would have to draw inspiration from the success of other regional economic blocs like the European Union and Asean that have demonstrated that narrow national advantages can, on the basis of equitable participation, be subsumed into a much larger collective advantage that benefits the entire region."
He said: "We hope that our meeting will add another potent dimension to the rapidly progressing regional co-operation amongst the Saarc member states." The meeting follows up from the deliberations and decisions of the 13th Saarc Summit, held in Dhaka in November 2005, Under the Dhaka Declaration of the 13th Saarc Summit, the heads of state or government decided to establish a Saarc Poverty Alleviation Fund (Spaf) with voluntary and assessed contributions, he added.
To intensify regional interaction and regular stock taking of progress, he said the Saarc heads of state also decided that finance ministers should meet within the first quarter after every summit and should continue their interaction on the sidelines of the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank annual meetings. This continuous interaction augurs well for providing a sound basis for South Asian co-operation and joint efforts, Salman added.
Comments
Comments are closed.