ISLAMABAD, April 6: The negotiations carried out at the World Trade Organization (WTO) were in conflict with our trade and economic policies and adversely effected our day to day life, said Saarc Secretary-General, Q.M.A. Rahim at a lecture delivered at Saarc Chamber of Commerce and Industry on Friday.

Mr Rahim, who was Bangladesh’s High Commissioner to Pakistan some four years ago and was happy to be back in Islamabad, said the Saarc region was caught in a vicious poverty trap, where the causes of poverty were often the consequences of poverty.

He said the only way out of the impasse was to work out policies whereby the common man would be enabled to engage in productive capacity and contribute to his country’s economic prosperity. His lecture focussed on the “Government-Industry Partnership through Saarc Perspective.”

He said the subject was first addressed by the Chamber of Economic Cooperation in February 2000 at Kathmandu. The theme was then presented at the recently concluded Eleventh Saarc Summit, when a Partnership Affirmation was handed over and concern was expressed at the serious developmental challenges that poverty imposed.

The Summit called for identifying areas in which industry could work and complement the efforts of the government to engage in issues directly related to poverty, such as creating employment, skill upgradation, and improvement of education, health and welfare of women and children.

He said it was an accepted fact all over the world that all the actors in the social system had to work in tandem to bring fundamental changes in their mindset as well as work as a team for development and economic prosperity. As such the Saarc CC&I must work together to implement the partnership affirmation.

Mr Rahim emphasised that business community should think of Saarc as one region. “We need to think as South Asians without sacrificing our identities as Pakistanis or Bangladeshis... and when we learn to do this a genuine partnership would be evolved and each and every one of the social actors would be able to contribute in a meaningful manner for the upliftment of South Asia.”

The programme coordinator of Saarc CC&I, Waqar Ahmed Sheikh, said for the past decade South Asia has been the world’s fastest growing region and yet remained the most impoverished with half a billion people living on less than one dollar a day.—Jonaid Iqbal