Cabinet Secretaries of Saarc countries have agreed to enhance internal cooperation and to work together to reduce poverty, ensure good governance in the financial sector, and utilise information and communication technology to improve the standards of citizen services.
This was the outcome of a two-day meeting attended by the cabinet secretaries of member countries of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation. The meeting, which started on April 26 and ended yesterday, was held at the Ruposhi Bangla Hotel in the capital.
“Attendants of the meeting identified poverty as the main obstacle to development in South Asia. The meeting agreed to take comprehensive measures to fight poverty. Cabinet Secretaries of the Saarc states assured the forum they would take measures after consulting with the respective authorities,” Cabinet Secretary M Musharraf Hossain Bhuiyan told reporters yesterday after the meeting.
Cabinet Secretaries of Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka and Afghanistan attended the meeting. Eight delegations out of a total of 24 were from Bangladesh.
The delegation of Maldives could not join the meeting due to the financial crisis of the country. The country had closed down its Dhaka office for the same reason.
The third meeting of the Cabinet Secretaries is expected to be held in Pakistan and the fourth will be in Nepal.
Musharraf, also the chair of the second meeting, said the attendants expressed their interest in enhancing cooperation in different sectors.
He said they talked about boosting cooperation by working under the Public Private Partnership (PPP) programme of the government. A number of initiatives will be taken under the PPP programme among the Saarc countries.
Issues like poverty elimination, reducing death rates of children and mothers, empowerment of women, achieving the millennium development goals, ensuring maximum enrolment of female students in schools were discussed in the meeting, Musharraf said.
He said they had also discussed reform of the civil service, providing a check on corruption, good governance in financial and other sectors, ways to ensure optimum utilisation of ICT and wider spread of e-governance in Saarc countries.
Commenting on the effectiveness of Saarc, its Secretary General Arzun Bahadur Thapa said: “We have not failed at all. We have worked on regional development, poverty elimination, providing a check on terrorism and the enhancement of inter-regional connectivity. Several agreements were also signed among the countries.”
“At least, we have not sacrificed our sovereignty like other regional organisations,” he added.