Common economic agenda vital for the region - Cabraal

Hiran H. SENEWIRATNE

The South Asian region has to work for a common economic framework/model fitting to each country in the region to achieve a sustainable economic growth in the long term perspective, the Governor of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka Ajith Nivard Cabraal said.

“We are the people creating our society, therefore we have to find our strategies for the best interest of the future generation in the next coming decades,”

addressing the SAARC Finance Governors’ Symposium and Inaugural International Research Conference held at Central Bank said.

The event was organised by the Central Bank and Governors and its officials participated from all SAARC member countries.

He said the South Asia known to be quiet region at one time, but during the last few years this region took a new stunt achieving a high growth momentum especially India, Sri Lanka and Maldives.

This growth attracted and recognised by many countries including USA and European Union, he said.

With the role taking place in economic momentum in the South Asian region our countries have to overcome many common challenges and constraints like poverty, terrorism, inflation and many more.

Therefore a new framework and a new growth model would address these issues with the implementation of policy framework/models, he said.

“Asian region have to deal with high energy and commodity prices that has slowed down the growth trends with the gradual declining of economic development in industrialized world.

Therefore, there is no magic wand to address this difficult condition in the world,” he said.

He said that with such problems in the region, it gives opportunities to move forward in a coercive manner. Therefore we have to find new economic models reflecting the country’s needs and requirement to achieve a sustainable growth in the region.

Cabraal said that when other countries moving their per capita income from US $ 1,000-3,000 some years ago they never experienced issues faced by countries at present like copyright laws, labour problems, stringent environmental pollution laws.

Cabraal also said that our region should work together and form a strategy to make our future more effective with the implementation of all economic models, which is unique to each country in the South Asian region.