Muhith for knowledge exchange

Finance Minister Abul Maal Abdul Muhith has urged greater exchange of knowledge and information as part of south-south cooperation to hasten the progress of developing nations.

He made the appeal on Wednesday, the second day of a two-day high-level meeting on global cooperation that began on Mexico City on Tuesday.

The minister said expansion of trade, commerce, investments and worker migration and enhanced exchange of knowledge would bringing ‘multi-dimensional benefit’ to developing nations.

Over 1,500 government, non-government and civil society representatives from 130 countries and international agencies took part in the meeting, organised by the Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation (GPEDC).

The delegates adopted a joint communique and 28 special initiatives to make global development cooperation more effective in future.

Muhith led a high-level delegation to the meeting. The team included Cabinet Secretary Musharraf Hossain Bhuiyan, Economic Relations Division Secretary Mohammad Mejbahuddin and Kazi Nabil Ahmed MP.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Secretary-General Jose Angel Gurria and Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto attended the meet on Tuesday.

The finance minister said the supply of internal resources needed stepping up to boost development.

Referring to Bangladesh, he said the contribution of revenue to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was 10.5 percent in 2009 but rose to 13.5 percent in 2014.

On Tuesday, Muhith held a meeting with United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) chief Helen Clark.

They discussed a plan to establish an organisation, ‘International Institute on Southern Innovation’ on south-south cooperation in Bangladesh.