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Our Bureau

New Delhi, Sept. 16 The Finance Ministers of SAARC member countries have suggested establishing an expert group on the development of capital markets in South Asia.

This recommendation came at the second meeting of the SAARC Finance Ministers hosted by New Delhi on Saturday.

Issues of information sharing and cooperation among capital market regulators in the SAARC region also came up for discussion at the meeting.

“I think questions about one capital market or cross border listings are for the distant future. At the moment what we are trying to see is whether capital market regulators can work together, share information, and cooperate with each other through MoUs,” Mr P. Chidambaram, Union Finance Minister, told reporters after the meeting.

Meanwhile, SAARC Finance Ministers have agreed to expedite the operationalisation of SAARC Development Fund (SDF), which has a corpus of about $300 million.

The fund is being created to focus on the improvement of maternal and child health, women’s empowerment, and capacity building to enhance the quality of education in the region.

Mr Chidambaram also said that the inter-governmental expert group on financial issues has been mandated to develop the roadmap for the SDF, the South Asian Economic Union (SAEU), and the South Asian Customs Union (SACU) in a gradual and phased manner.

A meeting of SAARC finance secretaries was held here on Friday. The meeting discussed the issue of terror funding in the region.

The Financial Sector Secretary, Mr Vinod Rai, said that a working group of SAARC would meet on September 24 or 26 to suggest more concrete ways to counter terror funding.

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