PM to open SARRC Finance Ministers meet today

ISLAMABAD: The First SAARC Finance Ministers meeting will be held here tomorrow. The conference is expected to be inaugurated by the Prime Minister, Mr. Shaukat Aziz.

After the inaugural session, the Advisor to the Prime Minister on Finance, Revenue, Economic Affairs and Statistics will chair the working session.

Delegates from the SAARC Secretariat and SAARC member countries including India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, Maldives and Pakistan will participate in the conference. It is hoped that the conference would add another potential dimension to the rapidly progressing regional cooperation among the SARRC member states.

The meeting follows up from the deliberations and decisions of the 13th SAARC Summit, held in Dhaka in November 2005. Under the Dhaka Declaration the Heads of State/Government decided to establish a SAARC Poverty Alleviation Fund (SPAF) with voluntary and assessed contributions. The Finance Ministers of the SARRC countries were advised to formulate recommendations on the operational modalities of the Fund after taking into consideration the outcome of the meeting of the financial experts.

In this regard, they welcomed the offer of Pakistan to host the next meeting of the Finance Ministers. They agreed that the South Asia Poverty Fund would function within the South Asia Development Fund, which would be reconstituted as the SAARC Development Fund (SDF) and would serve as the umbrella financial institution for all SAARC projects and programs.

The Fund, with its own permanent Secretariat would comprise three distinct Windows namely, Social Window, Infrastructure Window and Economic Window. The three windows would offer concessional and non-concessional funds as well as grants to the SARRC countries. A Poverty Alleviation Fund would be established under the Social Window as an integral part of SAARC Development Fund to be managed and operated by the Governing Board of SDF, with an initial corpus of US $ 300 million, to be raised from the contributions of the member states. The focus of lending under the Fund would be on poverty alleviating projects.

The 1st informal meeting of SAARC Finance Ministers was held in Hyderabad, India on 3 May 2006 on the sidelines of the 39th annual meeting of the Asian Development Bank in which all member States participated. It was attended by Advisor to the Prime Minister on Finance, Revenue, Economic Affairs and Statistics. The meeting reiterated the need for seizing the opportunity for furthering the process of regional economic cooperation in a significant manner.

The 1st meeting of finance experts from SAARC countries was held in September 2005, followed by the second meeting of finance experts in Katmandu in February 2006. These meetings came out with recommendations regarding the operationalization of the SAARC Poverty Alleviation Fund.

The Finance Ministers meeting will review the finance experts’ recommendations as further discussed and refined during the preparatory meeting of finance experts and Finance Secretaries meeting being held today.