Fehmida says ECO energy cooperation plan off track

Council elects Mirza as president of Parliamentary Assembly of ECO.

ISLAMABAD:

National Assembly Speaker Fehmida Mirza said on Monday that a critical five-year plan of action on energy cooperation between Economic Cooperation Organisation (ECO) member states remains off track.

Delegates attending the inaugural conference of the Parliamentary Assembly of ECO (PAECO) signed the charter of the organisation in order to put it into effect. The executive council unanimously elected Fehmida Mirza as president of the first general assembly of PAECO.

Mirza told the group that all agreements, including ECO Vision 2015, which anticipated the region as a free trade area by 2015, the ECO Trade Agreement and the ECO Trade and Development Bank remain far off target. The volume of inter-regional trade remains less than $50 billion.

“It’s an irony that there remains a wide gap between the region’s abundant energy resources and the acute needs of its member states, especially Pakistan,” said Mirza in her speech. She identified terrorism and extremism as challenges posing serious threats to the region’s stability.

She told delegates hailing from Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Azerbaijan, Turkey and Iran that the ECO ministerial meeting passed the five-year plan of action on energy cooperation in 2010 but that it still awaits implementation.



Proposals like the ECO Vision 2015 remain far from becoming a reality. “Despite sharing common borders, the inability to develop effective and reliable transport systems have not allowed any two of our members states to become each-other’s leading trade partners,” said Mirza.

Individually through supportive legislation and policy while collectively through meaningful ‘parliamentary diplomacy’ would contribute to realisation of mutually agreed goals, she added.

On the sidelines

Azerbaijan’s parliament speaker, Oqtay Asadov, called on National Assembly Deputy Speaker Faisal Karim Kundi and discussed matters of mutual interest. Fehmida Mirza also held bilateral meetings with Afghanistan’s Deputy Speaker Neamatutallah Ghauffari.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 12^th, 2013.