To improve the intra-trade, the eight leaders vowed during the 15th summit to "implement the SAFTA in letter and in spirit."

    They agreed at the summit to address the major barriers hindering effective trade liberalization in the region, which include sensitive lists of items and non-trade barriers.

    The eight members also signed the Agreement on the Establishment of the South Asian Regional Standards Organization, which was supposed to facilitate free trade in the region.

    In September, Pakistani President Asif Zardari and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced that the two countries would start cross-border trade in October.

    Analysts said the move of the two largest members would serve as a key to unlock South Asia's trade potential as it may begin to accelerate a full normalization of relations through trade. They said an improved bilateral relationship could have tangible spill-over effects on the region.

    The first South Asia Economic Summit was held in Colombo on Aug.28-30 as a follow-up to the 15th SAARC Summit.

    The economic summit, attended by a wide range of stakeholders including the World Bank, Commonwealth Secretariat, UNDP, ADB, as well as the SAARC, was also seen as a positive step to promote regional economic cooperation.

    Facing the critical issue of absolute poverty in the region, leaders of the SAARC member countries "resolved to continue to combat poverty through all available means, especially through people's empowerment."

    They committed themselves to continuing to share each other's experience and success stories of pro-poor poverty reduction strategies such as micro-credit systems, community-driven initiatives and the raising of the consciousness of the poor on their right to resources and development.

    The leaders also expressed satisfaction at the signing of the Charter of the SAARC Development Fund (SDF) and called for an early ratification of the SDF Charter.

    The SDF will provide financial assistance for the economic, social and infrastructure development of SAARC member countries with an initial corpus of 200 million U.S. dollars. In addition, India has pledged an ad-hoc contribution of 100 million dollars for the proposed Fund.

    As a follow-up measure of the 15th summit, agricultural ministers of the SAARC countries met in New Delhi on Nov. 5 to discuss the operation of the SAARC Food Bank.

    The SAARC Food Bank is aimed at maintaining a food stock to be used in case of emergency. With an initial stock of 243,000 tons of food grain, the bank will be set up with the contributions of the SAARC nations and operationalized by the end of December.