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| May 17, 2005 | Tuesday | Rabi-us-Sani 8, 1426 |
Economic potential of S. Asia highlighted
BHURBAN (Murree Hills), May 16: South Asian parliamentarians attending a conference on Monday voiced general agreement over the view that their region could become a leading economic power if correct paths were followed by the countries forming one-third of the world’s population.
The discussion on the first working session of a six-day conference hosted by an organisation of South Asian journalists centred on a paper presented by Pakistani economist Dr Akmal Hussain, who said that South Asian states could form the world’s second-largest economic power after China in about two decades—if they developed an integrated economy.
Most parliamentarians agreed with his assessment and discussed — in two sessions at the Bhurban hill resort near Murree — what their countries should do to achieve this goal, with most of them calling for an end to the antagonism between some of them, amicable settlement of their problems and devotion to collective development.
A senior Indian parliamentarian, Nilotpal Basu of the Communist Party of India-Marxist, presided over the sessions devoted to the topic of “South Asian Vision”
Dr Akmal said if the present gross domestic product (GDP) growth trends in China, the United States and India continued for the next two decades, China could become the world’s second-largest economy in the world with the United States relegated to the second position and India being the third largest.
“However, if South Asian countries develop an integrated economy, then South Asia can become the second largest economy in the world after China,” he said. “Given the geographic proximity and economic complementarities between South Asia on the one hand and China on the other, this region could become the greatest economic powerhouse in human history,” the economist said.
But he pointed out that if South Asia were to play a leadership role in the new world taking shape, “then it must take specific initiatives within a new policy paradigm for pursuing peace, overcoming poverty and protecting the life support systems of the planet”.
This, he said, would require the region’s governments to “move out of a mindset that regards an adversarial relationship with a neighbouring country as the emblem of patriotism, affluence of the few at the expense of the many as the hallmark of development, individual greed as the basis of public action, and mutual demonisation as the basis of inter-state relations”.
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