ISLAMABAD, April 6: India’s minister for state and deputy chairman Planning Commission K.C. Pant, who arrived here on Saturday to attend a two-day Conference of Saarc Finance and Planning Ministers, will hold talks next week with the finance minister Shaukat Aziz and deputy chairman Planning Commission Dr Shahid Amjad Chaudhry on various issues.
Speaking at a news conference here on Saturday, finance minister, Shaukat Aziz, said that the Saarc conference has a priority agenda of discussing and finalizing a strategy to remove poverty from the region.
“But we would also hold bilateral talks including the Indian delegation”, he added.
Responding to a question he said that matters relating to trade and other economic cooperation among Saarc countries will also be taken up.
Interestingly, there were no bilateral talks during the recently concluded Saarc information ministers conference in the capital.
The finance minister said that poverty was a very serious issue in South Asia.
“Roughly, 43 per cent of the world poor live in South Asia”, Aziz said adding that out of the 1.4 billion population of South Asia, 555 million people live below the poverty line.
“In our region there is more poverty than in Africa, and that is why we are gathering here to focus on poverty alleviation”, he said. The conference would be inaugurated by President Gen Pervez Musharraf on Monday.
He said the Saarc meeting would discuss the outcome of the Mexico summit to have more resources for poverty alleviation.
He said that the United States and the European Union have promised to provide more funds to developing countries.
A similar conference, he said, would be held in South Africa in August.
“We will adopt an Islamabad Deceleration for cooperation over the issue of poverty”, the finance minister added.
“But we will have to show better economic management in our countries to qualify for funding by the developed countries”, Aziz said. He said Saarc should ensure better use of foreign aid.
Aziz said that the participants of the conference would try to benefit from each other’s experience. For example, he said, India has done fairly well for improving the social safety net. Similarly, Bangladesh, he said, could share its expertise in the field of micro funding to poor people. Asked how could there be any poverty alleviation when India’s expansionist policies continued, Aziz said, political matters are not included in the conference’s agenda.
To another question, Aziz said that there will be time for soul searching as to why there had been no progress in removing poverty from the region by 2002, as decided by the Saarc heads of state at Dhaka in 1993.
