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Download PDF The World Bank (WB) is going to submit proposals to South Asian governments within 12 months for regional projects on cross-border transport, water-sharing and management, energy exports and trade facilitation to boost intra-regional trade.
The governments have also been asked to form inter-ministerial committees to discuss the four identified sectors for holistic and concrete solutions, WB’s South Asia Director Sadiq Ahmed said yesterday.
He was talking to the journalists at a workshop with the media on South Asian Regional Cooperation held at Sonargaon Hotel in the capital.
The WB is following up on Asian Development Bank’s (ADB) now defunct process to start the regional cooperation on key sectors, Sadiq said.
The decision was taken as the South Asian leaders informed WB President Robert Zoellick last year that regional cooperation was “not moving,” Sadiq told The Daily Star.
During his visit to Bangladesh in January, WB South Asia Vice President Praful C Patel, along with Sadiq, had met with Chief Adviser Fakhruddin Ahmed and Foreign Adviser Iftekhar A Chowdhury among others, to discuss the regional projects.
At present, they are in the process of holding consultations with the civil society from South Asian countries, Sadiq said, adding that it would be followed by meetings with all stakeholders before the concrete proposals are submitted to the governments.
The four sectors were identified after prolonged consultations with the South Asian governments, he said.
Replying a question on whether the initiative would be able to overcome the political problems in the region, Sadiq said, “You have to de-politicise the proposals and make it purely economic. Otherwise, it will not go through.”
The objective of WB is to gain something ‘concrete,’ he said adding, “We cannot solve regional problems of food, water, energy and transport without regional cooperation.”
The WB South Asia director also said that Bangladesh should acknowledge the fact that India is selling 400,000 tonnes of rice at a rate, which is $300 less per tonne than the market price.
M Rahmatullah, a transport expert, observed that Bangladeshi consumers are paying for additional bottlenecks stemming from transport barriers between countries.
Bangladesh could not only profit from transit fees, but also from allowing neighbouring countries such as India, China, Nepal and Bhutan to use the country’s two ports, Chittagong and Mongla, he said.
Rahmatullah also said that the opportunity is ‘time-bound’ as the ports in other countries could take the market away from Bangladesh in the future.
Currently, South Asia is the least integrated region in the world and lags behind other regions in intra-regional trade growth. It is the only region in the world to have intra-regional trade below 2 percent of its total GDP.
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