(KUNA) -- His Highness the Amir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah announced an initiative of USD two billion for financing development projects in non-Arab Asian countries.
HH’s announcement came during an opening speech of the first Asia Cooperation Dialogue (ACD) Summit, which opened yesterday. Welcoming the distinguished guests, HH the Amir said that their participation in the event “indeed confirms your keenness on preserving this important dialogue, and the need for all of us to work on its activation, development, and promotion to meet our aspirations and expectations.
“It also pleases me to welcome the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan as member in our forum, which reflects the growing interest in the forum, and its objective in promoting development and stability for the people of our Continent.” HH the Amir went on to say that “this Summit is being held after more than a decade of the establishment of the Asia Cooperation Dialogue Forum, under changing political circumstances and suffocating economic crises at the global level; their consequences are still being felt and are causing serious challenges to our continued efforts and attempts at upgrading the levels of development of our continent, in achieving the ambitions and aspirations of its peoples.
“This requires that we all intensify our efforts, and utilize our meetings to discuss in depth, and with objectivity these challenges, analyzing their causes and containing their impact, in order to avoid their recurrence. This will preserve the stability of our countries and permit them to achieve ambitious and effective levels of growth.” HH noted that “by convening the annual meetings at the ministerial level to discuss the means to ensure high level of cooperation and coordination among our countries, which we appreciate. The Member States of this Forum have clearly demonstrated its vitality.
“Today, we find that we are called upon to develop the mechanism of our cooperation, taking into consideration the visions and the common determination commensurate with our deeply rooted relations, that characterized the ministerial meetings, and enabling us to advance our joint work to a wider horizon.” In this regard, HH called for submitting scenarios and concepts consistent with the size of responsibilities, in order to pave the way for their implementation.
“In this concern, the State of Kuwait has the pleasure to host any mechanism which would be agreed upon by experts of our countries in their coming meeting.” “Achieving the economic cooperation we desire requires the creation of an investment-friendly environment and the necessary enactment of legislations to promote such environments, to stimulate intra-regional trade between our countries, as well as attention to infrastructure common to our countries, particularly in the fields of transportation and communication, that will increase the exchange of goods and services,” HH Sheikh Sabah stressed in his speech.