India to contribute to South-South experience exchange facility: FM
05 Oct 2009
Finance minister Pranab Mukherjee has said that India would be an active partner in the South-South experience exchange facility and would soon be making a contribution to this facility.
Speaking at a function on "South-South opportunities" in Turkey's capital Istanbul late last night, Mukherjee hoped that donor countries would continue to support this facility and the important South-South development agenda.
Saying that the World Bank has already accepted the development proposal, Mukherjee encouraged the developing country partners to take advantage of this facility and learn from each other.
He said that the South-South learning was a new opportunity in development and many developing countries may not have enough financial resources, but have very rich development knowledge.
"All of us working together, can seize the South-South opportunity to promote common development, he emphasised.
The finance minister said that Indias experience in poverty alleviation, education, cooperatives, womens thrift and credit groups and large scale wage employment programmes like National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme could provide valuable lessons to other developing countries, especially African countries.
The Indian experience in implementing economic reforms, in the development of IT sector, building of infrastructure through the PPP model, setting up of centers of excellence in engineering and management education, could help other developing countries to face and overcome similar developmental challenges.
On other hand, we would be keen to know how conditional cash transfer programmes have worked successfully to ensure targeted subsidy provision to the poor in many countries, or how some countries have mainstreamed environmental concerns in their national development plans, he added.
