India participated in the 17th Ministerial Meeting of the Bay of Bengal Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) grouping on 1st April 2021. The meeting took place virtually by the Government of Sri Lanka as the Chair of BIMSTEC.
The text of the BIMSTEC Charter was finalised in this Foreign Affairs meeting that will help member states timely complete their internal procedures for its adoption at the fifth BIMSTEC summit.
What is BIMSTEC?
The Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) is a regional multilateral organisation consisting of seven South and South-East Asian countries.
These countries are; India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Myanmar.
The Ministry of External Affairs states that BIMSTEC over the years has emerged as a promising sub-regional grouping with growing strategic and economic interests of the Member States, as well as of the international community in the Bay of Bengal region.
Key Discussions of the Meeting:
BIMSTEC finalises Connectivity master plan
All the member states have finalised a major Connectivity master plan for the Bay of Bengal region. They will take up the Master plan for transport connectivity for adoption in the next summit of the organisation which will be hosted by Sri Lanka in a few months.
This connectivity master plan was created after more than a decade of consultations among the member states wherein a study was conducted by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in 2007 and 2014.
ADB identified 166 connectivity projects at an estimated cost of USD 50 billion from which 65 projects were identified as priority projects.
Agreements between the Nations, Way Forward
The meeting inscribed three MoUs and agreements relating to a convention on Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal matters, cooperation between diplomatic and training academies, and creation of BIMSTEC Technology Transfer Facility in Colombo.
External Affairs Minister Dr. S Jaishankar in a statement has said that disaster management is an important area of collaboration among the BIMSTEC countries having similar geo-climatic conditions. He iterated, “BIMSTEC Centre for Weather and Climate, being hosted in India, is fully functional with state of the art facilities to provide Disaster Early Warning.”
Dr. S Jaishankar further iterated that development and prosperity go hand in hand with peace and security. Since South, South-East Asian regions face both traditional and non-traditional security challenges, cooperation in the security sector holds special significance for the region.
The Minister stated that National Security Advisors of Member States have met thrice since 2017 and have since been working closely to move forward in several aspects of security cooperation including counter-terrorism, intelligence sharing, coastal security and cybersecurity in tactile ways.
The 17th BIMSTEC Ministerial Meeting was conducted in preparation for the 5th BIMSTEC Summit which is scheduled to be held in August of 2021. The Foreign Ministers attending the meeting adopted the reports of the 20th, 21st and special Senior Officials’ Meeting of BIMSTEC amongst other important matters.
In this meeting, India has concretely reaffirmed its commitment to further build the momentum of regional cooperation under the BIMSTEC framework and make the organization stronger, vibrant, more effective and result-oriented in all its future approaches.
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