SAARC Trade Fair on 28

Eighth South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation (SAARC) Trade Fair will be held from 28 to 31 August at the BMICH. The Federation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry of Sri Lanka has finalized all necessary arran- gements to hold the event.

The added feature this year is the conducting of the first South Asian Economic Summit (SAES) parallel to the Trade Fair and to fulfill this task The Institute of Policy Studies of Sri Lanka (IPS) will join hands with the FCCISL.

The trade fair will feature well over 600 exhibitor organizations from the eight SAARC member countries who will showcase a magnificent range of products and services to a wide cross-section of visitors comprising end users, buyers, trade organizations, policy makers, state officials and academia.

FCCISL had the honour of hosting SAARC Trade Fair in Sri Lanka earlier in 1998. The other stakeholders for the event are the Department of Commerce, Export Development Board, of Investment, Sri Lanka Customs, Sri Lanka Tourist Board, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Export Promotion and many other public and private organizations.

President, FCCISL and Vice President, SAARC Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Nawaz Rajabdeen, said that among the many bold initiatives taken towards achieving the long term objectives of SAARC is the organizing of the SAARC Trade Fair which has immensely contributed to economic cooperation among business, industry and entrepreneurial sectors of the member countries.

He said that this Trade Fair has now become a regular feature since 1996 when the first SAARC Trade Fair was held in New Delhi, India and it promotes intra-SAARC trade.

South Asia is considered to be the most diversified culture and biodiversity of the world and the prospect of new product development, marketing of tourism in the region and sharing resources through joint strategies are some of the responsibilities of SAARC.

The annual SAARC Trade Fair is the forerunner in achieving these goals.

The SAARC region being the largest geo-economic block of the world with a population of 1.2 billion people and a combined average growth of 7% and a customer base of over 425 million people in the middle class bracket is easily the largest economic block of the world.

Hence an event of this nature will facilitate in economic cooperation and bring about harmonious and healthy economic relations among the business communities of the region.