Bangladesh is likely to press the upcoming SAARC finance ministers' meeting for signing all pending agreements among member-countries for forming the South Asian Economic Union (SAEU), official sources said.
As part of the move, they said, signing of motor vehicles agreement, accords on regional railway connectivity, harmonisation of customs procedures and avoidance of double taxation in SAARC region will be focussed in the meeting,
The two-day eighth meeting of the SAARC finance ministers begins in Islamabad on August 26 where state minister for finance MA Mannan is scheduled to attend in place of Finance Minister AMA Muhith.
The finance ministers of the SAARC member-countries sit prior to annual summit of the grouping to discuss different issues in executing the SAARC leaders' pledges to deepen regional integration and form the SAEU.
Finance ministry sources said, the upcoming meeting would review the progress of the recommendations made in the seventh SAARC Finance Ministers' meeting held in Kathmandu last year and discuss ways to speed up the process of their implementation.
But Bangladesh is likely to focus more on functioning of SAARC Development Fund (SDF) as its fund could hardly be utilised for infrastructure development in the region, they added.
"Bangladesh is more interested in creating a common market, free trade areas, unified standardisation etc for heading towards SAEU for economic integration," said an official, who will attend the meeting as a member of the Bangladesh delegation.
He said, Bangladesh feels the necessity of signing an agreement on promotion and protection of investment in the SAARC region to create safe environment and press two other windows of the SDF into functioning.
The SAARC Secretariat has set an agenda of bringing down tariffs, eliminating non-tariff and para-tariff barriers, reducing sensitive lists for the member-countries, strengthening social window and expediting operationalisation of economic and infrastructure windows of the SDF as only US$ 60 million of the fund was used in the last seven years.
The finance ministry official said Bangladesh is also likely to propose further amendment of the rules to utilise the SDF speedily.
According to the SAARC Secretariat, Bangladesh will have to reduce the sensitive list to 450 and reduce tariff to five per cent by 2030.
Sources said, a target has also been set to reduce sensitive list to 900 from the present 1,241 at the time of implementation of SAFTA Phase-III.
Since the SAARC leaders expressed their strong determination to deepen regional integration during the 18th SAARC summit held in Kathmandu on November 26-27 in 2014, a series of SAARC meetings were held on financial issues wherein recommendations for the SAEU were made.
The meetings also focused on guarding the region against global economic shocks and working towards a common surveillance mechanism.
The next SAARC summit is set to be held in Pakistan in next November the agenda of which would be finalised at the Finance Ministers' meeting.
   smunima@yahoo.com
Dhaka set to press for forming South Asian economic union
Munima Sultana | Published: August 19, 2016 00:00:00 | Updated: February 01, 2018 00:00:00
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