Emerging Policy Priorities for South Asia : Insights from the SAPLING High-Level Policy Dialogue

Overview & Synopsis

South Asia has secured food self-sufficiency but loses over 30% of what it produces between field and fork - more than 40% of that after harvest - at a cost of roughly 4% of regional gross domestic product (GDP). Intra-regional food trade remains below 5%, far behind ASEAN (27%) or the EU (around 60%), even as youth unemployment sits near 15% and women remain underrepresented in formal value chains. The SAPLING 2026 Regional High-Level Policy Dialogue, Unlocking Value, convened over 200 stakeholders from Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal and Sri Lanka, across different sectors to translate this diagnosis into a regional policy agenda from which five cross-cutting findings emerged.