Kathmandu: Foreign Secretary Nepal Bharat Raj Paudyal on Sunday said the government’s priority was to connect the Nepalese highlands in the Himalaya with the Indian Ocean, while underlining the need for greater economic and regional cooperation, which would increase trade and investment in the region.
Speaking at the Fifth Indian Samudra Conference, IOC 2021 in Abu Dhabi, Paudyal stressed that land-locked countries such as Nepal is concerned with the Indian Ocean and consider it as an economic lifeline.
“There is a need for international and regional support for developing countries that are locked in land to increase their capacity to reap the benefits by connecting the highlands in Nepal with the Indian Ocean through seamless hardware and connectivity software,” he said.
After the challenge caused by Covid-19, a foreign secretary argues that a stronger vaccine cooperation and sharing technical knowledge and capacity building must be at the forefront of the region.
He also underlined the need to maintain the ecological balance to fight climate change, reaffirming Nepal’s commitment to increasing clean energy share and achieving net carbon emissions in 2045, contributing to the ecology of the region.
The Indian Foundation and the UAE government together regulate conferences that have more than 200 delegates from 30 countries.
The Minister of India’s external affairs Jaisankar and President of Sri Lanka Gotabaya Rajapaksa are some of the high profile names to participate in this event.
The theme of the two-day conference that began on Saturday, was ‘Indian Ocean: Ecology, Economy, Epidemic.’