The Government of the Kingdom of Thailand hosted the 14^th Asia Cooperation Dialogue (ACD) Ministerial Meeting under the theme “ACD – the way forward” on 9^th - 10^th March 2016 in Bangkok, which was preceded by a Senior Officials’ Meeting.

The Ministerial meeting was declared open by the Prime Minister of Thailand and was well attended by delegations of 34 ACD member countries.  Dr. Harsha de Silva, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs headed the Sri Lankan delegation to this forum.

The highlight of this meeting was the accession of Nepal as the 34^th member of the ACD. In addition, the Ministers discussed during the Retreat on consolidating the broad 20 areas of cooperation in to 6 priority pillars namely, (i) Connectivity, (ii) science, Technology and Innovation, (iii) Education and Human Resource Development, (iv) Nexus of Food, Energy and water security, (v) Culture and Tourism, (vi) Promoting inclusive and Sustainable Development, in order to make collective progress on the essential areas of cooperation.

The concept of upgrading the existing ACD Provisional Secretariat to a permanent full-fledged Secretariat was discussed extensively and in this regard a high level study group has been appointed to study the matter further.

The 2^nd ACD Summit will be hosted by Thailand during the 4^th quarter of 2016 in Bangkok during which the United Arab Emirates (UAE) will assume Chairmanship of the ACD for the period 2016-2017.

ACD is an inter-governmental organization created in 2002 to promote cooperation in identified sectoral areas amongst member countries from Asia.

Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Colombo

11 March 2016