IPS organises 12th South Asian Economic Summit
The 2-day, 12th South Asian Economic Summit (SAES) organised by the Institute of Policy Studies (IPS) was held last week at the Colombo Hilton with the opening remarks being made by Dr. Dushni Weerakoon, Executive Director, IPS.
The first Summit was held in Colombo in 2008 and so far 11 Summits have been held in the capitals of South Asian countries and the stakeholders for it were regional governments, private sector, research/academic community, donors and civil society.
It provides a platform to discuss and debate socio-economic challenges and foster and develop regional integration and cooperation to generate new ideas and solutions for consideration by the policy makers.
Finding solutions to issues are imminent as the reforms have come to a grinding halt, Dr. Weerakoon remarked stressing that there are issues in public finance, investments, public service, healthcare, education and crucially in rising income inequality in most of these countries.
The intersection of technology, economics, culture and politics means shaping the region’s collective future for the Fourth Industrial Revolution (FIR) has to be understood, she said.
The late Dr. Saman Kelegama, Executive Director, IPS was one of the co-founder members of the SAES and his work since 2008 was remembered and amply appreciated at this summit.
On the sidelines of the inauguration, Dr. Weerakoon told the Business Times that Dr. Kelegama along with four other partner institutions from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal initiated SAES. She said that sometimes bilateral tensions leads to collapse in discussions but then picks up again.
The Summit, she said has been instrumental to create the South Asian Free Trade Agreement which is now in force and generates some limited benefits, but, it has not really moved the way it should have moved.
She indicated, “We have various plans and activities to strengthen our networks and collaborative partnerships and some of the internal institutional issues about raising the quality of our research”.
Making some comments on the current issue of impact of climate change on life, business and economics, Dr. Weerakoon said that it is very much a part of things at which they also look at.
Dr. Abid Q Sulerl, Edecutive Director, Sustainable Development Policy Institute, Pakistan who was a panelist on “Plenary 1 on Growth, and Equity – Achieving SDGs in South Asia in 4IR” said that with FIR coupled with artificial intelligence, there is hope and it entails challenges and opportunities.
He said that the impact of the climate change is a reality and is all about how the world is developing. Some countries – developed countries – through manmade activities rapidly contribute more to influence climate change by emitting more carbon dioxide (CO2) than that of the developing countries like Sri Lanka.
He said that FIR offers solutions to mitigate the manmade impact such as solar energy. The advancement in procuring solar power is that it can now be obtained by just painting the buildings that would transmit energy automatically, replacing large and expensive ‘solar panels’.
There are fears that while growth takes place at the present pace, it may cause passing the impact of problems to the future generations and the pressure is mounting to prevent this.
Dr. Sulerl pointed out that though there are remarkable solutions coming through the FIR, adding that: “Copyright of those technologies are with the developed nations and the developing countries do not have access to such technologies, if they cannot afford and if they cannot apply it they would not be able to reap the benefits of FIR”.
On the same issue of ‘impact of climate change’, Prof. Sirimal Abeyratne from the Department of Economics, Colombo University said that global warming and erratic weather patterns are developing so that there is a climate change, which is not unusual as it is a cycle which means that it would come down and again it will rise up.
“That is the way of the planet and the universe and at a time period of global warming and negative weather patterns, there would be lot of disruptions to life, the vegetation, the food patterns and all these things”.
The Summit, she said has been instrumental to create the South Asian Free Trade Agreement which is now in force and generates some limited benefits, but, it has not really moved the way it should have moved.