Kathmandu, Oct. 29 – The Nepalese Minister of Commerce and Supplies, Honorable Rajendra Mahto, is hosting the official launch of the SAARC Trade Information Portal – www.saarctrade.info – on the morning of Thursday, 29 October 2009, at Hyatt Regency Hotel in Kathmandu. In the presence of His Excellency Dr. Sheel Kant Sharma, Secretary-General SAARC, several trade ministers from SAARC member countries are witnessing jointly with representatives from the business community and public organizations from the region the launch of the portal.
The portal will be a single point of access for all current SAARC-related business and trade information. Data from all eight SAARC countries in the portal has been collected and is continuously being validated by 26 regional and national partners from both the private and public sectors.
The initiators of the portal, SAARC Information Centre (SIC) and German Technical Cooperation (GTZ), pursue the approach that having access to reliable trade information generates additional business because more and better information facilitates faster, more efficient and more cost-effective ways to realize intra-regional trading and business opportunities. As a result, successful businesses will create more employment and thus contribute to the socio-economic development in the SAARC region
SIC and GTZ say that while information appears to be available through internet search engines, its quality and the validity are typically not useful for business decisions. Businesses, especially Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs), from the SAARC region are therefore in demand for well structured, aggregated and prioritized information in accordance to the need of producers on the one side and traders including importers and exporters on the other side.
This first official SAARC trade information portal is managed by SIC, a neutral and unbiased intergovernmental body, located in Kathmandu, Nepal.
In addition, it is being supported by SAARC Chamber of Commerce and Industry and twenty four national partners such as national federations and business chambers, industrial associations and departments of trade and industry providing and continuously validating the content.
The portal is also directly connected to the International Trade Center (ITC)’s market analysis portal. ITC’s market analysis tools, TradeMap and Market Access Map, available free of charge for developing countries, represent best practices and global standards on information delivery. As such, www.saarctrade.info is a highly dynamic and interactive site.
The portal is a state-of-the-art product of the SAARC Trade Information Project, jointly implemented by SIC and GTZ and funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Co-operation and Development (BMZ). The software for the portal has been designed and developed by an IT firm from the region to showcase and demonstrate the available expertise in the region.