-Ambassador Nihal Rodrigo

Kathmandu: The Secretary General of the SAARC, Ambassador Nihal Rodrigo has said that “if the postponement of the SAARC Summit is said to have caused a slackening of high political activity, the activities of South Asian Associations of professionals, industry and business groups, artists and writers and the members of civil society have continued and increased which complement technical and functional work proceeding at the official level”.

The SAARC Secretary General made these observation during the fifth South Asian economic cooperation conference organize by the SCCI and the FNCCI on “Government-Private sector partnership: A strategic alliance for 2010” held Sunday February 4, 2001.

Dwelling on the SAARC’s role in facilitating in the growing collaboration between governments and the private sector, Nihal Rodrigo opined that SAARC continues to have consultative meetings with the Executive Committee of the SCCI during its Economic Cooperation Conferences and that those have been useful in identifying and discussing issues of concern to the private sector and have enabled the governments to be kept briefed of them and to take action as appropriate.

Shedding light on the topic of the conference Ambassador Rodrigo maintained that the government and the private sector need to work together in maintaining and developing the economy and this relation should be guided not by animus but a nexus.

“In the regional context, despite notable exceptions, SA’s economic and social situation is grim and that the alleviation of poverty and more rapid social up-liftment requires a multi-dimensional, sustained effort which neither government nor industry can alone succeed in achieving”, added Rodrigo.

According to Rodrigo, the rationale for a positive partnership between government and industry is no longer a theoretical abstraction rather it constitutes a realistic, and practical means of advancing national progress and development-a contract sealed not by legal clauses but through a balance of interests and obligations, managed and carried out as a common commitment to serve the people to whom they are responsible: the voter, the consumer and the shareholder.