Monday, November 13, 2017

South Asia Economic Summit from tomorrow

Nepal is hosting a three-day regional economic summit to strengthen economic integration in the South Asia and sub-region.
The tenth South Asia Economic Summit (SAESX) – with the theme Deepening Economic Integration for Inclusive and Sustainable Development in South Asia – will start tomorrow. It will be attended by more than 200 delegates, including ministers, members of Parliament, planners, senior government officials and leading think tanks and researchers from South Asian countries to discuss on inclusive and sustainable development, according to a press note from the National Planning Commission (NPC).
The main theme of the summit will be strengthening economic integration in the sub-region for attaining inclusive and sustainable development, it added.
National Planning Commission and Commerce Ministry in collaboration with South Asia Watch on Trade, Economics and Environment (SAWTEE) is organising the summit that consists of 18 sessions in which a wide range of issues, including regional trade potentials, cooperation on power trade, collaboration for reducing disaster impacts, intellectual property relating to herbs, employment generation, trade facilitation, collaborate on climate change, international labour migration will be discussed.
South Asia Economic Summit is a civil society initiative – almost a track 2 initiative – of the South Asian think-tanks and is organised in different countries of South Asia. Five South Asian think-tanks including South Asia Watch on Trade, Economics and Environment (SAWTEE), Nepal, Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) Bangladesh, Research and Information System for Developing Countries (RIS) India, Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) Pakistan and Institute of Policy Studies of Sri Lanka (IPS) Sri Lanka take turns to organise the annual event in one of the SAARC countries.
Established in 2008 the regional economic platform has also initiated debate and discussions on various issues relating to South Asian development challenges and succeeded in developing itself as an effective medium of regional integration and economic collaboration in less than a decade, said vice chair of NPC Swornim Wagley.
The main objective of the summit is to help the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) process on economic development.
Wagle said the conference would help to develop consensus among the participating countries on the main agendas and challenges of development issues as the South Asian region is known as the least integrated region of the world due to lack of connectivity. Intra-regional trade and investment among South Asian countries is just around five per cent of the total trade and investment of South Asian countries with the countries beyond the region.

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