Dr Ahmed Rashid Malik, a research scholar and analyst, Islamabad Policy Research Institute (IPRI) has said that since the partition of the subcontinent, political controversies are going on, so the process of economic integration was not possible.
Nevertheless with the establishment of the South Asian Association for Regional Co-operation (Saarc) positive efforts to direction have started. He was speaking in a one-day workshop on "Perspectives of regional integration in South Asia: Learning from Asean experiences" on Friday organised by the Area Study Centre Far East and South East, University of Sindh.
A large number scholars of the Area Study Centre, department of international relations, students of M.Phil and Ph.D and others attended the workshop. Dr Malik said that if compared with Asean, there was no hegemonic power in Asean among like that of India in South Asia.
He said that although Indonesia could have been but it maintained its low profile. He said that political controversies between south Asia countries could not promote economic integration there, although there where controversies in Asean countries as well, he added.
He said yet the region developed despite the prevalence of external powers involvement in different countries of the region coupled with some other problems like Human Rights in Myanmar, and added that still the region was quite integrated.
Dr Malik said that another reason for low level of economic integration in South Asia was the nuclearisation of the region. He said that since Pakistan achieved parity with India in 1998, the region was further subjected to international political controversies.
Whereas in Asean, regional countries did not opt for nuclearisation and the region had been declared as a nuclear free zone, he said. According to his opinion, in South Asia the regional economic integration is not at high pace due less focus of Human Resources Development (HRD) caused by low level of literacy and lack of training in Human Capital.
He further said that however most of the Asean countries had around 90 percent literacy rate that facilitated increased integration, whereas Pakistan's literacy rate was 42 percent.
He said that Asean countries were right now in the second stage of economic integration since they had incorporated outer world in economic co-operation, mainly China, Japan, India and also European Union (EU), and added that yet south Asia was not in its first stage of economic integration.
Dr Malik said that in recent summit of Saarc, some improvements had been made with inclusion of Afghanistan in South Asian Region along with giving observer status to some countries of outer world eg China, Japan, EU and USA, and added that there were future possibilities for Iran to become so as well.
He further said that inclusion of those countries as observer status in Saarc for the first time might probably bring about some development as they all were major trading partners in the region. This inclusion was a sigh of promotion of economic integration since they were also the major political actors in the world so that might facilitated to defuse tension between regional countries, he added.
Nevertheless, there are many controversial issues like South Asian Free Trade Area (Safta), which was not progressing much, he added. He said Pakistan was believing that India was yet not allowing Pakistani exporters to enter Indian markets as much as the Indian exporters were in to Pakistani markets, adding that therefore Pakistan was not able to have due share of Safta regime.
Dr Malik suggested that experiences of Asean with respect to comprehensive security could also be borrowed into Saarc. The second speaker of the day Professor Samren Fatima said the two regions were expressing different level of co-operation.
She said South Asia was among the most densely populated regions in the world, which vast disparities in income level, Saarc share in world trade was only four percent and volume of trade within the region constitutes one percent of the total world trade.
She added that this compelled the researchers to study the reasons and come up with constructive recommendations to bring improvements in the regions.
Dr Lutfullah Mangi, Director of the Area Study Centre of the University highlighted objects of the workshop. The students and the faculty members while participating in the discussion put the different questions, which were answered by the scholars.
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