Yadav Kant Silwal, General Secretary of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) said that the implementation of SAPTA (South Asian Preferential Trade Arrangement) is a major achievement of SAARC within the ten years of its establishment.

Talking with the delegation of Nepal SAARC Journalist Forum on the eve of the Association’s complication of the ten years, the general secretary expressed his view that the trade relations and economic benefits will help to solve the political problems within the member state.

He observed that it took forty years for the European Economic Community (EEC) and 27 years since the establishment of associations of the South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) to achieve their present positions, which, in only a decade, SAARC has been able to reach its present institutional status. “This must be taken as some achievement,” he added.

People’s Review, 14 December 1995.