JANUARY 2016

Saarc standards for six products in the offing

The Daily Star 31 Jan 2016
The South Asian Regional Standards Organisation (Sarso) has developed Saarc standards for six products to facilitate intra-regional trade and create scope for a wider global market access of the items. More…

SAARC Minus X: A Constructive Approach for India’s Regional Integration

Swarajya 27 Jan 2016
In essence, SAARC members should first focus on areas where mutual cooperation is beneficial, and not permit issues of politics or ideological disagreements, i.e. the “X”, to impede progress by willing members in other areas. More…

A South Asian Federation?

The Free Press Journal, 4 January, 2016

Certainly it is “high time” — to borrow an expression of Pakistan’s PM Nawaz Sharif – that India and Pakistan bury the hatchet so that South Asian development gets a boost. This region is the epicenter of global poverty while billions of dollars are spent on acquiring the latest fighter jets and costly weaponry. More…

10 years of Safta: Is there any hope for free trade in South Asia?

One India, 2 January, 2016

January 1, 2016, marked the tenth anniversary of the South Asian Free Trade Area (Safta). The agreement, which was reached in January 2004 at the 12th Saarc Summit in Islamabad, Pakistan, came into force on January 1, 2006, and became operational after the agreement was ratified by seven nations (Afghanistan, the eighth member, ratified it in May 2011). More…

An opening for South Asian trade?

The Asian Age, 1 January, 2016

India and Pakistan have initiated dialogue several times over the last six decades, only to end the process amid acrimony. Why, then, would things be different following Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent Christmas Day stopover in Lahore? Optimists believe the answer might lie in the desire of Modi and Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to expand economic cooperation across South Asia. More…