India says boosting trade and easing travel restrictions within South Asia will be the issues dominating a summit of the region’s leaders here early next month.
“The objective of the upcoming summit will be to see that the spirit of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) is translated at different layers,” Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee told the Press Trust of India news agency in an interview.
“Visa restrictions have to be removed ... all these issues we will try to resolve at various levels, including at the summit level,” he said in the interview, excerpts of which were released on Sunday.
The New Delhi summit, to be held on April 3-4 and attended by the heads of government of Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, will formally welcome Afghanistan as its eighth member.
In his interview, Mukherjee said market reforms introduced by South Asian nations had ensured “all the SAARC countries have had good GDP growth over the last one-and-a-half decades, despite many problems and political uncertainties”. “But this is not reflected in the intra-regional trade,” he said, noting that the volume of trade among SAARC countries was merely five percent.
Mukherjee said he hoped Pakistan would implement the South Asian Free Trade Agreement soon. “Pakistan has been raising certain non-tariff issues, which we will try to address,” he said. afp
Source: Daily Times
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