Uzair bin Farid

SAARCFINANCE will help the member countries of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), including Pakistan, to overcome poverty and underdevelopment, and achieve high levels of growth. This was stated by Governor of the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) Jameel Ahmad while chairing the 43rd SAARCFINANCE Governors’ Group Meeting. The meeting was also attended by other central bank governors including Maha Prasad Adhikari, Governor of Nepal Rastra Bank, and Dr P Nandalal Weerasinghe, Governor of Central Bank of Sri Lanka.

Jameel Ahmed said the South Asian region was beset by economic and climate calamities. “All countries in the South Asian region face exploding populations, poverty, underdevelopment, ecological collapse, and deteriorating human security,” he mentioned. He said that it is very important to remedy the situation through increased investment in modern sciences, vital infrastructure, education, futuristic industries, and healthcare. “SAARCFINANCE is a very important forum for collaboration on all these fronts. By coordinating our efforts, we can achieve more for our people than we can do on our own,” he added.

The SBP governor said that SAARC is a testament to the fact that countries can come together to pool their energies and achieve their shared goals. Jameel Ahmad said that the South Asian region is the most populous region in the world. “Therefore, it is very important for us to make sure that we live up to the hopes and expectations of our people,” he said. After the speech of Jameel Ahmad, the meeting of the central bankers took stock of the initiatives currently underway under the SAARCFINANCE umbrella, including database, financial inclusion, collaborative studies and capacity building.

During the meeting, the SBP also presented the results of a study conducted during the past year over the use of unconventional policy instruments by South Asian central banks. Similarly, the Nepal Rastra Bank presented a study on the prospects and adoption of Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) in the SAARC region. On the sidelines of the meeting, Dr Asim Ejaz Khwaja from the Harvard Kennedy School delivered a lecture on “Democratising Lending: The Challenges and Opportunities for Financial Inclusion in Emerging Economies” where he discussed how lending processes can be made more inclusive and efficient for the countries of the South Asian region.

During the second leg of the meeting, the SBP hosted a symposium for the central bank governors on the theme “Climate Change and Green Financing: Initiatives & Outlook in South Asia”. During the symposium, all the central bank governors agreed that climate change represented an existential threat to the people living in the South Asian region, and that the financial institutions like the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the International Finance Corporation (IFC) should promote green finance to support climate-friendly policies of governments.

Credit: Independent News Pakistan-WealthPk