SAARC Development Fund to be signed at Colombo Summit

Leaders of the member countries of South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) will sign the charter of SAARC Development Fund (SDF) at the upcoming summit in Colombo on August 2 and 3.

SAARC Secretary General Sheel Kant Sharma said this when he met Chief Adviser Fakhruddin Ahmed of the Bangladeshi caretaker Government on Wednesday, the private news agency UNB reported.

Talking about the implementation status of various decisions taken at the last SAARC summit in New Delhi in April 2007, Sheel Kant Sharma said the SDF charter and by-laws are "almost in the stage of finalisation."

He also said the South Asian University in New Delhi will start operations by 2009. The New Delhi Summit last year agreed to operationalise the SAARC Development Fund and establish the South Asian University with its headquarters in India.

The SAARC secretary general, who arrived here on Tuesday, will attend the SAARC ministerial meeting on climate change here on Thursday.

SAARC, the single largest platform in South Asian, region having one-fourth of the world population, comprises Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.