Speaking during the meeting on Regional Cooperation on Afghanistan on Tuesday, Ghani said that the trend towards regionalism is likely to be reinforced with a major shift toward highlighting the role of Asia in the world economy, ANI reported.
In 2018, Iran and India had signed an agreement worth $85 million to develop the Chabahar Port in south-eastern Iran. The Chabahar Port, which provides an alternative route for trade between India and Afghanistan, is located in the southern Iranian province of Sistan and Baluchestan, off the Gulf of Oman.
The Afghan president further said, "Asia is in the process of transformation from a conceptual region to a functional region. Whether by self-identification or cumulative work of academic disciplines, Asia is long recognized as a conceptual region.”
“The emergence of Asia as a functional region, however, embodied in its transformation into a continental economy, is the result of the cumulative investment in critical infrastructure associated with the first, second, third, and fourth industrial revolutions."
He added, "Connectivity is the key for understanding the scale, scope and direction of the transformation of a conceptual region into a functional region, as spatial flows and interactions, made possible by critical infrastructure, measure the degree of density of connectivity.”
The Afghan president said that a strong regional consensus is essential to creating sustainable peace.
MR/PR