EDITORIAL: President Dr Arif Alvi’s made an astute observation that ECO (Economic Cooperation Organisation) member states were among the least integrated in terms of trade and investment, despite having all necessary ingredients. Speaking at the 15th Summit of the Heads of State of ECO over the weekend, President Alvi was candid and honest in his lament that this bloc hasn’t done much to live up to its potential. Indeed, the fact that intra-regional trade between ECO members is only eight percent of their overall trade depicts neglect of this initiative. It shows that nothing was done to build on the foundation laid by the leaders of Pakistan, Iran and Turkey in 1985 to promote regional connectivity.
President Alvi might also pointed out that problems in Afghanistan, and the need to overcome them, could just give this Organisation the push it needs to spring into action. It’s clear that Afghanistan, given its social, political and financial challenges, will not survive without substantial outside help. It is equally clear that pending formal recognition of the Taliban regime by the outside world, regional countries will have to do what they can to keep Afghanistan from collapsing completely; not the least because they stand to lose the most from an untimely implosion of the country. And the best way to bring stability and prosperity to Afghanistan is to increase trade and commerce across the entire region in a way that all countries converge towards a common trade/economic policy.
Even the initial phases of such a strategy would lubricate the regional economy much more nicely and make the pain of economic sanctions, not to mention Washington’s decision to freeze more than $9 billion of the Afghan central bank’s money, sting a lot less. But such things don’t happen merely at the drop of a hat. They require political vision, the ability to overcome lingering disputes and an iron will to ensure proper implementation of agreements. The post-lockdown world is turning out to be very different from the one that plunged into the pandemic. All countries suffered and all of them are hurt by supply chain disruptions and commodity price inflation, but the threat of mass poverty, hunger and famines is much more serious for poor countries than rich ones.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2021
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