Kathmandu/ New Delhi, March 9 (IANS): The Saarc Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Saarc CCI) will hold a two-day 63rd Executive Committee and General Assembly in New Delhi along with the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (Ficci) starting from Tuesday with the formation of a South Asian Investment Caucus.
The Caucus is a forum of Saarc chief executive officers (CEOs). The industry chambers are expected will announce a series of initiatives at the sub-regional level focusing on specialised agendas.
In this respect, the Saarc CCI will execute two projects - Saarc Shipping Company and Saarc Transport and Logistics Company - with private and public sector participation.
According to Saarc CCI acting president Suraj Vaidya, this time around, new initiatives to address transit and trade issues at the South Asian and sub-regional level, private sector engagement under the Saarc Framework Agreement on Energy and public-private discourse on regional issues will be taken up.
The proposed CEOs' Forum will include members nominated by the members states, Saarc-CCI and those nominated by national chambers, including a vice president and executive committee member.
Vaidya said the forum is expected to help facilitate big investment in the region. He said they would also propose the forum members to be included as invitees during a ministerial meeting.
The Saarc-CCI intends to bring transit trade issues in South Asia so that landlocked countries like Afghanistan, Bhutan and Nepal could have access to other markets, instead of relying on neighbouring countries, the Saarc-CCI said in a statement.
The proposed South Asian Investment Caucus is an endeavour to encourage investors from South Asian companies to invest back in the region instead of their recent trend of investing outside South Asia.
"Like trade, intra-Saarc investment is also at the lowest level, which has limited the scope of economic cooperation, not allowing the region to deepen integration process," it stated.
Currently, trade among the Saarc member states accounts for only 3-5 percent of the total global trade.
The Investment Caucus aims to bring across the table the board of investments in South Asian countries and potential investors to deliberate upon the issue and pursue public-private partnership model to encourage and promote free flow of investment within the region.
Discussions will take place in three phases -- firstly focusing on Afghanistan, Pakistan and India followed by another phase which will focus on Sri Lanka, Maldives and India. In the third phase, the focus of the discussion will be on Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and India.
Given the Saarc Framework Agreement on Energy signed at the recent Saarc Summit, the Saarc-CCI plans to organise two events by inviting representatives of large-scale energy companies, energy practitioners for B2B meetings, and presentations amongst investing enterprises to enable them to discuss on possible options for cooperation.