Archives

KATHMANDU, Sunday (AFP) - South Asian leaders stressed the need for a common market and greater cooperation to fend off pressure from an increasingly global economic environment.

They said that unless the seven-nation South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) was able to reinforce its grouping with strong trade and business cooperation, its main objective would remain unfulfilled.

"It is time to adopt a visionary goal of establishing the South Asian Economic Union... and to start taking gradual and incremental steps towards that objective," Nepalese Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba said.

A higher "growth trajectory" was imperative for the poverty ridden South Asian region through deeper cooperation, said Deuba who took ovr the chairmanship of SAARC on Saturday.

He said the "least developed countries" of the region should be given special concessions to help them derive enough trade advantages.

So far the level of trade between the grouping of seven nations, which has nearly one-fifth of the world population, is just four percent of the total volume of trade conducted between the countries and the rest of the world

The seven South Asian nations have already signed an agreement for a South Asian Preferential Trading Agreement (SAPTA), which is a forerunner to a free market.

But it has not yet been fully implemented.

Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee said that such a regional economic grouping could cushion all the countries in the region from adverse global trade shocks.

"The progression from SAPTA to a free trade area and then to a South Asian economic union has a self evident economic logic," he added.

Bangladesh Premier Khaleda Zia said unless the main export commodites of member countries were given preferential duties and administrative blocks were removed there could be no improvement in trade volumes.

"Trade promotion calls for dismantling of non-tariff barriers. It must also reduce value added requirements under the rules of origin. Failure to redress these impediments will affect the creation of region-wide trading space," she said.

Zia also called for greater interaction among businessmen and investors and cooperation among financial institutions.

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf urged for the need for greater peace and cooperation saying the world would otherwise lose faith in South Asia as an investment destination.

He highlighted that South Asia's share of capital inflows to the devloping world declined from seven percent in the 1980s to three percent in the last decade.

Musharraf, however, cautioned that a common market should only be established once it was certain that the interests of the smaller countries were completely protected.

SAARC was originally expected to establish a framework treaty for a free trade area by the end of last year.

However, bilateral bickering between India and Pakisan held up the process.

Earlier the South Asian bloc endorsed two conventions in a bid to stem the trafficking of women and children for prostitution but failed to stem criticism from rights groups who said the agreements were toothless.

Foreign ministers from the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) countries signed the documents in the presence of their leaders who are holding a summit here, giving effect to an agreement reached at the previous summit in Sri Lanka in 1998.

Tens of thousands of women and children are forced into prostitution in South Asian countries and some are held as sex slaves while an increasing number of children are deployed as combatants in the region.

The Regional Convention on Combating the Crime of Trafficking in Women and Children for Prostitution and the Convention on Regional Arrangements for the Promotion of Child Welfare in South Asia will now have to be implemented by member states with enabling domestic legislation.

"With these conventions we have expressed our concern for the protection of women and children," said Nepal Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba, who took over as chair of SAARC from President Chandrika Kumaratunga of Sri Lanka. 

News | Business | Features | Editorial | Security
Politics | World | Letters | Sports | Obituaries |

Produced by Lake House
Copyright 2001 The Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Ltd.
Comments and suggestions to :Web Manager