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Colombo, Sri Lanka 23-24 August 2019 – SAARC Development Fund held its 31st Board Meeting in Colombo, Sri Lanka this week taking decisions on key issues to further promote regional integration and economic cooperation among its eight Member States.  
Two projects – Consortium for scaling up climate-smart agriculture in South Asia and the Second phase of Inter-professional Master’s Programme in Rehabilitation Science – were approved. 
The Project – Consortium for scaling up climate-smart agriculture in South Asia – with International Fund for Agriculture Development (IFAD) and through SDF’s funding will promote sustainable and resilient agricultural intensification in Afghanistan, Bhutan, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka through enhanced Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA) capacity and technologies. The project will be implemented by National Agricultural Research and Extension Systems (NARES) and SAARC Agricultural Centre (SAC). 
CEO of SAARC Development Fund Dr. Sunil Motiwal said that this project worth USD 3.32 million will directly benefit over 7,500 smallholder farmers as well as researchers, extension workers, and policymakers in Afghanistan, Bhutan, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. 
“Impacts of climate change are felt across South Asia and we believe that there is a need to enhance the adaptive capacity of smallholder farmers,” he said.
Smallholders will participate in the validation of CSA technologies and will benefit from training, exposure visits, and knowledge events. Hence overall, more than 100,000 smallholders will benefit indirectly from the development of strategies for scaling up CSA technologies. This is in addition to IFAD’s approved regional grant to support the launch of C-SUCSeS in Bangladesh, India, and Nepal.
The second project approved by the Board – Second phase of Inter-professional Master’s Programme in Rehabilitation Science for USD 1.5 million– will develop highly qualified professionals in the area of Rehabilitation Science to enable the provision of quality rehabilitation policies and services to people with disability in all the eight SAARC Member States. The Masters Programme is offered at the Bangladesh Health Professions Institute (BHPI), Centre for the Rehabilitation of the Paralysed (CRP).
Through this project, there will be 150 Direct Beneficiaries, 660 graduate and undergraduate students as secondary beneficiaries annually, and 234,432 patients or the disabled or people with chronic health conditions per year as ultimate beneficiaries. 
The SAARC Development Fund, since its inception in April 2010 by heads of the eight SAARC Member States, is mandated to build regional integration and economic cooperation through project funding in all the SAARC member states – Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. The Secretariat is based in Thimphu Bhutan.
SDF’s governance structure includes its Governing Council comprising of the Finance Ministers of the eight SAARC Member States, and its Board of Directors comprised of representatives from the Ministry of Finance of each Member State. The SDF Secretariat, located in Thimphu, Bhutan, is headed by Chief Executive Officer.
SDF has an authorized capital of USD 1.5 Billion and a total capital base of USD 511.52 Million. Currently SDF is implementing 80 projects (12 areas) under its Social Window funding scheme with fund commitment of USD 73.74 million and two more projects are approved in principle in social sector, 5 projects under the Economic and Infrastructure windows (including 2 in-principle approved projects) with a fund commitment of USD 73 million and MSME Program with fund allocation of USD 50 million in SAARC Member States. The cumulative fund commitment under the three funding windows including MSME Program stands at USD 197.4 million. 
“Further, more than 10 bankable projects including projects in Sri Lanka are also under active consideration of SDF to co-finance in the SAARC Member States,” said Dr. Sunil Motiwal.

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About Me

Dr. Sunil Motiwal is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the SAARC Development Fund (SDF).

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“The SAARC region comprises 3% of the world’s area, about 23% of the world population and about 3.3% of the global economy and is considered as one of the fastest growing region in the world. The region is blessed with a considerable young population and abundance of natural resources”

“The Fund is working tirelessly to promote regional cooperation and integration and envisages acting as a catalyst for infrastructure funding in the region by forming consortium of funding agencies and co-financing of such projects”

“If you look at America and Europe, it (trade, travel and tourism) is intra-regional. But if you look at South Asia, it is least integrated region in the world. If you look at intra-regional trade, there is virtually no trade taking place in the SAARC region. There is no intra-regional travel and tourism as such multiplier impact of trade within the region has not benefited the SAARC countries”

“SDF may explore projects that facilitate intra SAARC investment. This will immensely help in economically integrating the South Asian Region will also facilitate development of supply chain in line with the competitive advantages of South Asian Nation, entail development of secondary and tertiary sector in key industries and also facilitate development of Micro Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME)”

“SDF to work closely with various Multilateral Development Banks, International Financial Institutions, Regional Financial Institutions, Scheduled Commercial Banks, Infrastructure Funding Agencies to form consortium of funding agencies in order to co-finance large infrastructure projects in SAARC Member States.

“SDF to continue focus on co-finance Regional connectivity projects in Transport and Energy sectors in the region along with other Multilateral Development Banks”

“Per the policy guidelines of SDF, loans can be extended to both the private and public sectors in SAARC Member States. SDF to extend more support to the private sector under the MSME sector in SMSs. Focus to be given to innovative and tech based MSME private clusters in SAARC Member States in due course of time”

“We plan to convert SDF into regional bank in the next 2 years”

“SDF focusing on Social, Economic and Infrastructure Areas”

“SDF Regional Cooperation unleasing opportunities”

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