"The ongoing global financial and economic crisis has taken its toll on the provision of financial and technical resources from traditional donor countries to the developing world...The spending on development assistance by the world's major economies has fallen for the first time since 1997," he said at a World Bank workshop on global partnership here.
Development assistance aids provided by world's major economies to developing nations may fall further from its current levels due to the economic crisis, he said.
On the role of developing economies in the present circumstances, Saran said, "The role of large emerging economies as a sources of development funds and technology transfer has become increasingly more salient. South-South cooperation is playing a more significant role in international development than ever before."
The former foreign secretary also referred to the 2011 Busan Conference, which he said brought together all the major stakeholders together to deliberate on the issue of cooperation for development.
He also reiterated India's long history of development cooperation since the time of first prime minister late Jawaharlal Nehru.
"We do not accept a donor-recipient paradigm, we believe that cooperation must be pursued in accordance with the priority set by our development partners," he said.
