The two-day second meeting of the Saarc Cabinet Secretaries concluded here on Sunday, promising to enhance regional cooperation and ensure greater dissemination of member-states’ ‘best practices’.
The meeting adopted a draft report highlighting the areas of future cooperation and outlining ways for implementation of the decisions taken at the meeting.
“The meeting was very productive. We’ve decided to meet frequently and implement the decisions,” Cabinet Secretary M Mosharraf Hossain Bhuiyan said while briefing reporters on the outcome of the meeting held at a city hotel.
Secretary General of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc) Arjun Bahadur Thapa was also present.
Mosharraf Hossain said the third and fourth meetings of the Saarc Cabinet Secretaries will be held in Pakistan next year and Nepal in 2016 respectively.
The first meeting of the Cabinet Secretaries was held in New Delhi in November 2009 and its decisions were implemented ‘by and large’. “The progress is satisfactory but the gap between the two meetings was a bit big.”
“The meeting was held under the Saarc structure. Regional issues came up for discussions. However, political issues were not discussed,” said the Cabinet Secretary adding that the government is deeply committed to regional cooperation.
He informed that Cabinet secretaries of the seven countries attended the meeting but that of the Maldives could not due to financial crisis.
Mosharraf Hossain said the sharing of best practices of the Saarc countries was the most ‘exciting’ session of the two-day meeting where the participants presented their respective country reports.
Issues related to the optimum use of ICT in improving service delivery, putting e-governance in place, identifying poverty as the key enemy and taking coordinated efforts to address it, regional cooperation for effective PPP (public private partnership), reducing gender disparity in primary and secondary education, prudent microeconomic management and inclusive cooperation were discussed which will be implemented through joint efforts.
“Stronger steps need to be taken to implement the decisions. We want to make the regional cooperation stronger. Everyone is sincere from their respective positions to achieve the goal,” he added.
A total of 28 delegates — eight from Bangladesh and 20 from other countries — took part in the meeting.
Source: UNBConnect
