The 8th South Asia Economic Summit

The 8th South Asia Economic Summit (8th SAES) was under the theme ‘Regional Cooperation for Sustainable Development in South Asia’. IPS Executive Director, Dr. Saman Kelegama, Deputy Director, Dr. Dushni Weerakoon, Research Fellow, Dr. Athula Senaratne, and Research Officer Dharshani Premaratne were resource persons at the summit.

The Summit organized by SDPI (Pakistan) in partnership with CPD (Bangladesh), SAWTEE (Nepal), RIS (India), and IPS (Sri Lanka); was held in Islamabad, Pakistan, during 7th and 8th of December 2015.

The broad objectives of the Summit were to identify, analyse and prioritise opportunities and challenges for deepening regional integration with equal focus on inclusive economic growth, broad-based social development, environmental protection and respect for natural resources, to discuss roles of public sector, private sector and regional/multilateral organizations for broadening and deepening cooperation for sustainable development, and to bring the SAARC thought leaders under one umbrella to serve the official SAARC summit process.

Dr. Kelegama made the lead presentation on “10 Years of SAFTA and Way Forward” during the first plenary session. Dr. Weerakoon was a panellist in the session on “SDGs and Post-2015 Development Agenda: Perspectives from South Asia” while Dr. Senaratne was a panelist in the concurrent session on “Regional Cooperation on Disaster Risk Management in South Asia”. Dharshani Premaratne was a panelist in the concurrent session on “Achieving Gender Equality and Empowering Women in South Asia”.

Download Presentations

10 Years of SAFTA & Beyond
Saman Kelegama

Media Highlights

The Express Tribune, 8th December 2015
Pakistan Today, 8th Deccember 2015
The Express Tribune, 9th December 2015