ISLAMABAD, April 9: The third meeting of the finance and planning ministers of Saarc ended here on Tuesday after adopting a “Plan of Action” that seeks removing corruption, promoting good governance, ensuring transparent use of funds, improving procurement processes and bringing improvement to the police and judicial systems for alleviating poverty from the region.

“All the seven countries of Saarc have also decided to ask the rich countries to stop flight of illegal capital from our region to the developed world,” said Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz.

All tax-evaders and holders of black money who left this region and were living in rich countries should be brought to justice, he said.

Speaking at a news conference, the finance minister said that the plan of action also called for correcting internal and external approaches in order to have real change to address the serious issue of poverty in Saarc.

He said a high-level joint contact would be made with the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) for getting 0.7 per cent assistance of their Gross National Product.

“We are jointly raising our voice for the return of ill-gotten money and at the same time asking the developed world to give us both debt relief and debt swap for alleviating poverty from our part of the world,” the finance minister added.

In this behalf, Mr Aziz said rich countries would be requested to make legislation, directing their commercial banks to frame rules against the flight of illegal capital from Saarc region to the developed countries.

He said matters pertaining to trade would be further discussed to make South Asia a free trade zone. “We are asking market access from the world but first we should offer this access to our own countries,” Mr Aziz pleaded.

The finance minister said that a decision had also been taken to ask rich countries and multilateral donor agencies to offer non-HIPC (Highly Indebted Poor Countries) debt solution to the Saarc member states. “Our countries do need concessional grant and assistance.”

He said a decision had been taken that member countries would bring about fiscal discipline in all their matters and pursue prudent macroeconomic policies with a view to removing poverty from the region.

He told a reporter that corrupt trade practices would also be discouraged as all the seven member states of the forum felt very strongly about it. “We have decided to propose an institutionalise mechanism to discourage corrupt practices in trade,” he said, adding that the next meeting of the finance and planning ministers which would be held in 2003 in Sri Lanka would propose all the required recommendations for implementation.