It is high time for developing countries to identify their priority areas, to formulate realistic policy measures and make effective action plans in order to achieve development goals.
This was stated by Ishfaq Hassan Khan Economic Advisor at the meeting on 'South-South and South North collaboration in science and technology and present scenario and future prospects' here on Friday.
In this two day meeting more than 36 papers will be read out and discussed to evolve future plans to achieve 'the development goals.
Dr Ishfaq Hassan said that developing countries had similar problems in areas such as health, education, water resource management, etc. The need to tackle those problems was mainly hindered by the resource-constraints.
The developing countries were endowed with natural resources of various kinds and those resources need to be properly harnessed.
In addition, he said, it was important to share these resources amongst developing countries, as this would enable these countries to foster their common economic growth through collective self-reliance.
It is a known fact that no country had enough resources to meet all its requirements and the realisation of desired goals would be achieved only through a combined effort, Ishfaq said.
Knowledge sharing, skill sharing and resources sharing were the ways through which developing countries could expedite their peace of economic development, he said.
Countries of the South ought to undertake policy measures aimed at promoting inter-regional, regional and sub-regional co-operation, he said.
Although some developing countries were making progress to harness Science and Technology (S&T) for economic development, however, most of them were still far behind the industrialised countries of the north, he said.
The North-South co-operation was a partnership rather than of donor-recipient relationship, he said.
It was through the South-South and South-North co-operation in S&T that could meet the millennium goals such as poverty alleviation, he remarked.
Dr Hameed Ahmed Khan executive Director Comsats presented the welcome address and technical remarks.