Seven Finance Ministers, including Sri Jawaharlal Nehru, met in 1950. J. R. Jayewardene of Ceylon was one of them. They met to form the group called the Colombo Plan, in 1951, the formal announcement came that The Colombo Plan was formed.

Secretary General, The Colombo Plan Secretariat, Patricia Yoon-moi CHIA, said the hallmark of the Colombo Plan was its scholarship programmes, broad-based to include undergraduate training in given disciplines. There were also post graduate specialization programmes, which eventually produced ‘personage’ alumni who are now in key positions in the South East Asian Region serving their countries in top positions of leadership.

"The Colombo Plan had also put in place structural projects vis a vis building dams, roads, airports to move member countries forward to meet challenges of changing times", she said in an exclusive interview with the Sunday Island.

She said The Colombo Plan was the oldest Inter-Governmental Regional Organisation set up for technical corporation.

"Not quite like SAARC or SAFTA but one set up for technical assistance. There are now 25 member countries, all under one umbrella, so to speak, who do not work at cross purposes, but function together, yet maintain identities quite separate to other regional groupings", Yoon-moi CHIA noted.

There are other groupings mainly political. SAARC, SAFTA, SAPTA, ASEAN, have all been set up within a political frame work, she pointed out.

"From 1994, the image of this organization changed and to correlate to these changing times the Colombo Plan Bureau gave precedence to the Colombo Plan Secretariat".

‘Given the number of your predecessors, 20 before you? There seems to be predominance of males who have held the position you now hold, does sound a bit odd considering what you said about gender balance and so on. Like to comment’?

"I am the second woman to fill this position. That is correct. To answer your question, when the position fell vacant, I applied and got the job. There were nine males who also vied for it, but I got the job. So, women have not done too badly in a man’s world. You would agree with what I just said".

"How did I come to be selected? I was working in the Prime Minister’s Office, in Malaysia, I’m Malaysian, and that exposure perhaps got me the job. Yes, I worked with Mahathir Mohamed. But what has that got to do with this interview?

"Just a question. That’s all. It is necessary that I need to get as much information on your professional antecedents to give this interview more substance? If you like"?

"You asked about scholarships and scholars, your Dr. P. R. Anthonis, is a Colombo Plan scholar. Similarly, there are many more. Many ministers in the Bhutan parliament are Colombo Plan scholars, so too in Singapore. We have since its inception from 1951 to 1994 awarded some 400,000 scholarships and they have all made tangible differences to progress in their countries".