During the recent days, Pakistan has been participating in some high profile activities aimed at South-South economic co-operation. Earlier this month it was the host to a ministerial council meeting of the Asian Co-operation Dialogue, which aside from paving the way for Asia-wide economic co-operation through regional and sub-regional trading arrangements, seeks to work towards a free trade agreement. President Pervez Musharraf participated in an Asian-African Business Summit in Jakarta. On the sidelines of the summit, he also addressed a seminar on "The Role of Private Sector in Achieving Progress and Eradicating Poverty in Asia and Africa" where he made some important assertions with regard to forging closer economic co-operation.
Within the regional organisations, he rightly averred, "we need to provide the private sector and business chambers opportunities to interact on the margins of official activities." It hardly needs saying that in the present-day free market era, private sector has a lot more to contribute to the enhancement of international trade than in the days of command/mixed economies.
Even a communist country like China has come around to the view that partnerships between its own burgeoning private sector and those of other countries have a big role to play in increasing beneficial economic activity. It makes eminent sense, therefore, for governments to seek the input of this sector in determining policies, which eventually are going to affect it in one way or another.
Private sector interaction, however, is needed not only on the "margins of official activities", but at times, also at their centre. The business community in this country, for example, has for long been complaining that its representatives are not included in presidential/prime ministerial entourages when these leaders go abroad to discuss, among other things, important matters related to trade and commerce. Inclusion of private sector representatives in such official visits abroad can indeed prove to be helpful in opening up new avenues of economic activity.
In any case, as countries move towards greater economic co-operation, business- to-business contacts are necessary. People, of course, need to travel in order to work out agreements for trade and investment, which can prove to be a trying experience. For, it is not only the advanced countries that have tight rules for visa seekers from developing nations. Economic hardships having driven many to look for better opportunities within Asia, relatively affluent Asian countries too have adopted extremely restrictive visa regimes.
Resultantly, even bona fide business people needing to travel to Asian destinations have to go through time-consuming visa processing formalities. At times, they have to wait for long periods at the risk of missing important meetings. President Musharraf took due notice of this problem in his speech at the Jakarta seminar, observing that steps like easing visa regimes and giving preference to intra-South economic co-operation would allow the private sector to be more effective in advancing the cause of development.
The countries pushing South-South economic collaboration through the Asia Co-operation Dialogue and Asian-African business ties must act urgently to address this important but easy to resolve issue, and remove unnecessary visa restrictions for business travellers.