The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) countries have recommended for reconstitution of the existing South Asian Development Fund (SADF)and establishment of a SAARC Development Fund, an umbrella organization for all SAARC development funding, said a press release issued here Sunday.

"The proposed SAARC development fund will have three windows, namely, social, infrastructure and economic," said the press release.

"The social window, with an initial corpus of 300 million US dollars, is expected to fund poverty alleviation programs and projects among others. Through the infrastructure window, funds will be mobilized from within and beyond the regions, to finance infrastructure projects while the economic window will fund other non-infrastructure commercial projects," it said.

According to the release, a two-day meeting of financial experts that concluded Friday at the SAARC secretariat in Kathmandu underscored the need to mobilize the funds from within and beyond the region.

The meeting also examined the proposals for creating Poverty Alleviation and Infrastructure Development Fund and discussed the prospect of creating a South Asian Development Bank in the future,said the press release.

Source: Xinhua