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A project to promote tourism among the member countries of the Indian Ocean Rim Association for Regional Cooperation (IORARC) was handed over to its Business Forum to be considered for the inclusion in an ongoing tourism project of the Forum at the IOR-ARC Business Forum held at Hotel Taj Samudra Colombo yesterday.

Chairman of the IOR Academic Group Dr. Saman Kelegama said during the concluding sessions that the group was able to do something of lasting value to the region and deliberations of today would contribute immensely to reinvigorating the IOR-ARC.

Some delegates at the IOR-ARC Business forum yesterday. Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar was the chief guest. (Picture by Dudley Wickramasinghe)

The Academic Group is one element of the tripartite structure of the Indian Ocean Rim Association for Regional Cooperation (IORARC) the other two elements being the Business Forum and the Working Group in Trade and Investment.

Basically the Academic Group established as a 'think tank' had met and discussed issues pertaining to economic cooperation and prepared project reports for the approval by the Committee of Senior officials over the past seven years.

This Group also decided to have an intense interaction with the Business Forum and the Working Group on trade and investment in order to avoid overlapping and duplication of activities and draw synergies among the three groups.

A meeting with the two other groups, scheduled today will be the first time that such an intensive interaction among the three groups would take place in order to bring more coherence to sectoral cooperation projects, trade and investment promotion measures in the Indian Ocean Rim. It made a critical assessment of where IOR-ARC has gone wrong. Do you really have an Indian Ocean identity that brings us closer together? Questions such as this need intense discussion. Thus the Academic Group suggested a seminar cum brainstorming session to precede the next IOR-ARC meeting in Teheran, Iran in 2005.

Member states include Australia, Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Iran, Kenya, Madagascar, Malaysia, Mauritius, Mozambique, Oman, the Seychelles, Singapore, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Thailand, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen.

China, Egypt, France, Japan and the United Kingdom are dialogue partners, while the Indian Ocean Tourism is an observer.

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