SAARC expert group meets in Kathmandu later this month

FE Team | Published: October 19, 2007 00:00:00 | Updated: February 01, 2018 00:00:00

Naim-Ul-Karim
The Inter governmental Expert Group (IGEG) of SAARC member states is meeting in Kathmandu later this month to discuss formation of a SAARC Development Fund (SDF).
The SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) comprises Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
A meeting of economists held in September 2005 at the SAARC secretariat recommended reconstitution of existing South Asian development Fund (SADF) and creation of the SAARC Development Fund, an umbrella organisation for all SAARC development funding.
A government delegation of Bangladesh comprising senior officials of the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Law and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs will take part at the meeting scheduled to be held from October 31 to November 01.
The meeting will primarily discuss a bylaw that Bangladesh proposed to include in the SDF charter at the second meeting of the IGEG last month, a diplomatic source said.
Besides, he said, the meeting will also examine the SDF charter.
When asked, diplomatic source said the purpose of holding the third IGEG meeting in a short span of time is to reach consensus on all issues in this connection and enable the finance/planning ministers of member countries sign the SDF charter at their next meeting in December next.
The proposed SDF has three windows. The Social Window, with an initial corpus of US$300 million, is planned to fund, among others, poverty alleviation programmes and projects.
Through the Infrastructure Window, funds would be mobilised from within and beyond the region to finance infrastructure projects.
The Economic Window will fund other non-infrastructure commercial projects. The SDF will be professionally managed and it will have a permanent secretariat.
The recommendations of the IGEG are expected to be considered by the next meeting of the SAARC Finance/Planning Secretaries and Finance/Planning Ministers, the diplomatic source said.
He said formation of SDF will help all member states of SAARC launch large infrastructure development projects that will be designed to serve almost all the member countries' interest.