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Economics to dominate Vajpayee's speech at SAARC summit

Saisuresh Sivaswamy in Colombo

The prime minister will announce important measures relating to trade liberalisation in South Asia, at the inauguration of the SAARC summit in Colombo on Wednesday. These measures will pertain to a progressive reduction in trade tariffs.

He will also announce an increase in limits on investments by Indian entrepreneurs in the region. This will be a follow-up on the decision taken at the trilateral summit at Dhaka in January, when the then Indian prime minister had announced a doubling of investment ceilings for Indian investments in the region.

The Government of India has been looking at ways of hastening trade liberalisation in the region, since it believes trade to be a powerful instrument for economic growth and industrialisation. The government had been thinking of providing the means for setting up joint ventures, and has been working on this premise "purposefully" for the last four to five years.

India is also keen on addressing the specific question of preferential trade agreements and free trade areas, apart from making provisions for least developed countries, and providing them with market access.

The new measures to be announced by the prime minister are part of the nation's commitment to investment promotion and protection, it has been emphasised.

India's approach at the summit will reflect its basic vision for SAARC's future. The South Asian organisation has looked at international economies, financial flows, and at how the global markets can affect investment In the region. This, again, has engaged India's interest, it was stated.

Regional co-operation in the field of energy will be another area that will be attended to at the summit which begins tomorrow, and will take up the harmonisation of demand-supply situation. "We are merely trying to highlight synergies that are already there," officials stated on the eve of the high-level interface.

The points the prime minister will address in his speech at the inaugural ceremony, which will reflect the nation's basic approach to SAARC, are that broad changes are taking place all over in the area of globalisation and economic liberalisation with which the association's members must keep in step with, and that the association must prioritise, focus on areas that are one's national strengths.

Thus, with economics set to dominate the prime minister's address at the SAARC summit, the Sri Lankan foreign minister's statement, on the eve of the conference of the association's council of ministers, that the focus of SAARC was economic rather than political, has been lent credibility.

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