PM calls for S Asian integration via Safta

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New Delhi, Nov 10: Virtually setting the agenda for the upcoming Saarc meet at Dhaka, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has emphasised that regional economic integration, through instruments like Safta, is the only answer to combat poverty as well as terrorism while putting South Asia on the road to development.

Speaking at the PN Haksar memorial lecture in Chandigarh at the Centre for Research in Rural and Industrial Development, Dr Singh vehemently argued in favour of speedily ending trade policy barriers and move towards efficiency-seeking restructuring of industry. In support of this contention, he pointed out that the EU nations had begun with a single common market and had now gone as far as to give up their national currencies. Asean countries too were getting integrated with the economies in the neighbourhood like Japan, Korea, China and also India through free trade agreements.

The Prime Minister said, similarly, the destiny of South Asia was inter-linked —- the two recent natural disasters, the tsunami and the earthquake had proved as much. He added that and any country that did not end cross-border terrorism would have to suffer eventually. Pakistan, harbouring suspicion for reasons that are not difficult to fathom, is the only country that has resorted to delaying tactics on Safta on some pretext or the other.

Dr Singh made it clear that such mindsets had to change. “No government can any longer pretend that what happens across the border is not going to hurt it internally. No country can any longer pretend that someone’s terrorist could be someone else’s freedom fighter,” he said.

The Prime Minister also used the occasion to dispel concerns raised by smaller countries like Bangladesh and Nepal, which have been wary that a more liberal regime would be detrimental to their domestic industry. “Efficiency-seeking restructuring unleashed by the process of economic integration has helped in convergence of income levels between richer EU members (Germany) and poorer ones (Spain, Portugal and Greece),” he pointed out.

To bolster his argument, Dr Singh pointed out that the Indo-Sri Lanka bilateral FTA had, within the short period of implementation, led to a “lot of dynamism in bilateral trade and investment flows”. He pointed out that Unctad, in its World Investment Report, 2003, had highlighted how Sri Lanka attracted $145 million worth of investments in the period, making India the third largest source of investment for the island.