The secretary of the Economic Relations Division of the finance ministry has stressed on opening up further to South-South cooperation as it will allow Bangladesh to take a more prominent global role in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.

“South-South cooperation has become essential for Bangladesh to take a more prominent role in achieving the SDG targets by 2030, creating areas of cooperation between the southern countries and implementing good initiatives from one country to another,” Monowar Ahmed said on 12 January.

The cooperation is a broad framework collaboration among countries of the South in political, economic, social, cultural, environmental and technical domains.

SSC is aligned with Sustainable Development Goals 17 which points toward strengthening the means of implementation and revitalizing the global partnership for sustainable development.

Bangladesh, with its exemplary success story of economic development beating poverty and hunger, has the potential to be a role model for South-South Cooperation.

Some of the Bangladesh’s success has already been acknowledged by the international community and they can be considered as good lessons by many of the Southern countries.

“Bangladesh has proven its potential to be the leader of South-South Cooperation,” said Sudipto Mukerjee, Resident Representative of United Nations Development Programme in Bangladesh.

“UNDP thus will be undertaking further initiatives and ventures to further promote South-South cooperation in partnership with the governments of Bangladesh along with the other partner countries,” he added.

They were speaking at a training organized at the Planning Commission’s NEC II Auditorium on January 12 by UNDP’s Knowledge for Development Management (K4DM) Project, which is supported by the ERD.

The training, organized to familiarize further ERD focal persons and officials from 27 line ministries with South-South and Triangular Cooperation, was facilitated by Dr. Imtiaz Ahmed, Professor of International Relations, University of Dhaka.

The ERD secretary inaugurated the training as Chief Guest. UNDP resident representative was the Special Guest while, Ms. Sultana Afroz, Additional Secretary, ERD, Wing Chief (UN) and National Project Director, K4DM Project, ERD chaired the training.