The idea of establishing a regional payment initiative in the SAARC region was originated at the SAARCFINANCE Conference on ‘Towards a Regional Payment Group’ held at the Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CBSL) in July 2007. The Governors of the SAARCFINANCE Group approved the proposal for establishing a SAARC Payments Initiative (SPI) at its meeting held in Washington in October 2007. The SPI was launched on 28 March 2008 with inauguration ceremony held at the CBSL. The SAARC Payments Council (SPC) the apex governing body of the SPI convened its first meeting immediately after the inauguration ceremony.
The SPI is primarily aimed at strengthening the existing payment and settlement systems (PSS) in the SAARC region to facilitate an efficient, robust, stable and convergent PSS for SAARC region, that benchmark with international standards. It’s vision and mission will be accomplished by, facilitating the implementation of comprehensive reforms in domestic as well as cross border PSS through close coordination and cooperation.
The SPC acts as forum of SAARC countries to:
- collectively evolve a high level strategic direction and implement a road map for PSS reforms of individual member countries; and
- standardize PSS to create a level playing field in promoting regional harmonization and integration of domestic PSS of member countries for the development of intra regional PSS.
- The SPC comprises representatives nominated by the Governors of the SAARCFINANCE group. The SPC meets bi-annually in a member country. Initially, the SPI Secretariat was located at the Central Bank of Sri Lanka for a period of 3 years. In February 2012, the Secretariat has been moved to the State Bank of Pakistan for a period of two years to assist the SPC in coordinating the work.
The SPC is undertaking number of activities/ measures to implement action points of the Road Map broadly including:
- Carryout stocktaking exercise of Payment and Settlement Systems (PSS) in the region on a comparable basis to understand the current status of the PSS in each member country;
- Assess the volume of cross border remittance payments in member countries;
- Initiate to set up a National Payment Council (NPC)/ Committee in each member country, where such a committee does not currently exist;
- Conduct conferences/ seminars; publish SAARC Payments Bulletin and its own website to convey the developments in PSS in the SRRAC region and its future endeavors; and
- Developing Payment System Matrix (PSM) consists of member countries important payment systems electronic mechanisms, instruments and settlement mechanisms etc. in order to help member countries to better understand while communicating with each other and to bring their internal systems and procedures at par.
