KARACHI, Dec 26: Former foreign secretary of Bangladesh, Farooq Sobhan, while emphasising the need for doing away with tariff barriers in the SAARC region, called for learning from the experience of ASEAN which had made great strides in the economic field despite political disputes.
“In view of geo-strategic environment of South Asia, we should not get political agenda mixed up with economic agenda,” said president of the Bangladesh Enterprise Institute while speaking at the Pakistan Institute of International Affairs on Friday. The meeting was chaired by Fatehyab Ali Khan, chief of the PIIA.
He hoped that Islamabad SAARC summit would next week take some positive decisions with regard to South Asian Free Trade Agreement.
Mr Sobhan also emphasised the importance of people-to-people contact and called for doing away with visa altogether for the citizens of member states.
Mr Sobhan who authored the concept paper for SAARC, acknowledged that the performance of this regional organization over the years had been disappointing because of the apprehensions of India and Pakistan whose political dispute had dominated developments in the region.
He said that some concrete results could be expected with regard to SAFTA, agreement on social charter of SAARC and agreement on poverty reduction measures, as Islamabad summit was likely to focus mainly on these areas.
He said that the heads of SAARC states have themselves emphasized the importance of people-to-people contact and importance of communication links, train, land, by air and sea routes and added that “once SAFTA is signed, we will see free movement”.
He emphasised that there should be no restrictions for opening bank branches and joint ventures. He also called for creating a South Asia Exim bank to facilitate regional trade and economic cooperation.
He also called upon heads of state of the SAARC countries to clear the way for cooperation in the energy sector in which there were enormous opportunities. In this context, he referred to Iran- Pakistan-India gas pipeline, Bangladesh-India gas pipeline and hydropower development by exploiting resources of Nepal and Bhutan. He also called for creating independent South Asian Energy Regulatory Authority. He claimed that foreign investment was also available for these projects.
He said that South Asia is potentially rich in energy resources but it had not been developed. Mr Sobhan was of the view that single market was the only answer to the upcoming challenges of WTO.
He said that inter-SAARC trade and economic cooperation would help member countries to off-set negative impact of WTO on their economies and called for integrating economies of the regional countries.
Mr Sobhan also referred to rich experience of some the SAARC countries in international peacekeeping under the UN and proposed that it was time to pool resources and have South Asian Peacekeeping Institute.
