The Indian Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh will fly from Addu to Male on November 12 to discuss with President Nasheed which may lead to signing of a number of bilateral agreements. Defence cooperation, maritime security and piracy are on the agenda for discussion.

Dr Singh will also address the Majlis, the Maldivian Parliament.

The Addu venue is likely to witness signing of four multilateral agreements for the SAARC region relating to formulation of regional standards, rapid response mechanism to natural disaster and setting up of a common seed bank for the region.

The theme of the 17th SAARC Summit is “Building Bridges”, implying more integration for the region. The Meeting of the SAARC Council of Ministers is slated on November 9.

The Maldives is hosting the SAARC Summit for the third time after 1990 and 1997. But this is the first time that the South Asia Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) Summit is being held geographically south of the Equator (in Addu island).

The agreement on formulation of regional standards for South Asia is important in the context of boosting intra-SAARC trade which now stands at $ 1.3 billion. After the implementation of South Asia Free Trade Agreement, the intra-SAARC trade has doubled since 2009 to $ 1.3 billion. South Asia Regional Standards Organisation (SARSO) has been set up in Dhaka in Bangladesh. SAARC Arbitration Council has been set up in Pakistan.

There will be no discussions on evolving a common SAARC currency as the matter has not yet been examined in detail.

Improving infrastructure for connectivity in region and boosting intra-SAARC trade will be on the agenda for discussions. Bangladesh is already peeved as India failed to sign an agreement for sharing waters of river Teesta and this may pose as a stumbling block in the discussions on SAARC connectivity and infrastructure development. SAARC subgroup has had a number of meeting on rail connectivity for the region and has prepared a working paper. On road connectivity for the region the sub group has had only one meeting so far.

The 17th SAARC Summit is likely to review the implementation of SAFTA. There will be discussions on the sensitive lists and peak tariff rates. Intra-SAARC trade may get some impetus from Pakistan recently seeking to improve its trade relations with India and gradually move towards according Most Favoured Nation (MFN) status to India, which the latter had accorded to the former about 15 years ago.

The Pakistan Cabinet has asked the Commerce Ministry to improve its trade relations with India which may prove towards according MFN Status to India. After opposition to this move in Pakistan by a section of the business group, the Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani clarified : 'The Cabinet has only given its approval in principle to move forward on the issue (of MFN) and permitted the Ministry of Commerce, which is actively engaged in trade talks with New Delhi, to negotiate with it trade-related issues. We will give it the go-ahead if the situation is quite favourable and in the national interest. Otherwise, proceedings on it would be withheld.”

The Indian Foreign Secretary, Rajan Mathai said : “intra-SAARC trade will get a boost after Pakistan accords MFN Status to India.” He informed that Pakistan Judicial Commission would soon visit India.

The 17th SAARC Summit will discuss improving people-to-people contact and activating the newly formed South Asia Forum. The building for the South Asian University will be completed in Maidan Garhi in New Delhi by 2015. The second campus of the University is planned in Bangladesh. The University will also have its campus in two other countries in the region.

There is, however, no separate discussion for reconstruction of the war ravaged Afghanistan. Afghanistan is left to take benefits from whatever concessions would be made for the least developed countries (LDCs) for the region like small development projects, connectivity, capacity building, SARRC Development Fund, combating climate change.

SAARC is a 8-nation body including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, The Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Nine observers are invited namely Australia, China, European Union, Iran, Japan, South Korea, Mauritus, Myanmar, United States. Out of these nine observers, only two – Myanmar and Iran – are South Asian countries. At present for the 17th SAARC Summit there is no proposal on the agenda to invite these two South Asian countries for full membership of SAARC.