The SAARC Development Fund (SDF) secretariat received a voluntary contribution of US$ 300,000 from the Republic of China yesterday.
The Chinese Ambassador to Nepal and the permanent representative to SAARC, Yang Houland, handed over the cheque to the Chief Executive Officer of SDF, Karma.
The Ambassador said the contribution is to support SDF’s effort toward regional integration. “It is our strong desire to support SDF for the socio-economic development and integration of south Asia countries. We, as the neighbour of the SAARC, are happy to see the positive progress that was made before and we hope that this progress will continue…,” said Yang Houland.
He said stability and development is in interest of China and China would like to have more cooperation between SAARC and China.
SDF’s CEO said the contribution will be used efficiently for the development of the SAARC countries by funding projects.
“The total of US$ 600,000 we received from the Republic of China is very flexible. It comes without any conditions. They agree on our roles in terms of poverty, environment, gender and climate change,” said Karma.
The SDF had received US$ 3,00,000 in 2010.
SDF is working on the social window. The social window includes projects of livehood, health, education and environment.
By next year, SDF will activate two other windows , the economic and infrastructure windows.
