Kathmandu, November 4:

Tourism officials from Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka are holding a meeting from today to discuss opportunities for sub-regional cooperation in the areas of conservation and sustainable tourism development.

The two-day long sixth tourism working group meeting under the South Asia Sub-regional Economic Cooperation (SASEC) Programme of Asian Development Bank (ADB) kicked off on Friday at the 26th Floor, World Trade Centre, East Tower in Colombo.

It is a milestone event, being the first SASEC meeting in Sri Lanka. It also marks Sri Lanka’s integration in the SASEC Tourism Development Plan, says the ADB. ADB, through its SASEC programme, has been supporting the development of a Tourism Development Plan (2004-2014) for the sub-region comprising of Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, and Nepal, which was endorsed by the Tourism Working Group at its meeting in May 2004, at Thimphu, Bhutan.

The plan was formulated as the main blueprint for tourism development based on two themes— eco-tourism and Buddhist circuits. At the fifth meeting, held in Dhaka in February 2005, Sri Lanka expressed interest in joining the SASEC tourism working group.

A strong collaboration is being promoted with World Tourism Organisation (WTO), Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA), United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), and Netherlands Development Organisation.

The meeting will also discuss ADB’s assistance on SASEC human resources development (HRD) and capacity building, and a proposed technical assistance grant for preparing a SASEC Tourism Development Project aimed at upgrading tourism infrastructure and facilities in the member countries.

It is expected that there will be recommendations on the coordination of sustainable cultural tourism development with the conservation of cultural heritage resources, particularly Buddhist heritage. Further, priority pilot projects will be identified within the context of the ongoing projects, in order to develop best practices in the sub-region.

The SASEC Programme was initiated in 2001 in response to a request of the South Asia Growth Quadrangle, formed by the four countries to help facilitate and support their economic cooperation agenda.

SASEC Programme is helping to transform challenges into opportunities in one of the world’s poorest and most densely populated areas. The South Asian subcontinent is home to more than half of Asia’s poor. About 500 million out of an estimated 900 million poor people in Asia and the Pacific live in the region.