Firming up Bimstec: Colombo summit is an important step for regional cooperation

Twenty five years after it was kick-started in June 1997, the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (Bimstec)—comprising India, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Thailand, Bhutan, Nepal and Sri Lanka—is taking a firm shape as a regional grouping. First termed BIST-EC, it brought together Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka and Thailand. Nepal and Bhutan would later join in 2004, and Myanmar attended the first meeting in 1997 as an observer and joined as a full-fledged member at a special ministerial meeting later that year. It was during the first summit in July 2004 that the group’s leaders agreed to the name Bimstec.

The fifth summit in Colombo is a crucial marker in this regard as leaders of the seven members adopted the Bimstec Charter that defines its goals and long-term vision. This is a major achievement as it establishes the institutional architecture for the grouping. A clutch of agreements were also signed at the summit, including a convention on mutual legal assistance in criminal matters, a MoU on cooperation in diplomatic training and a memorandum of association for establishing a technology transfer facility in Colombo. This is indeed a foundation for further deepening and broadening of cooperation within the regional grouping.

For India, Bimstec is a compelling idea. Owing to the failures of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation—largely due to India’s problems with Pakistan—and the lengthening shadow of China’s influence in the region, Bimstec holds considerable promise as a ‘SAARC minus Pakistan’, with Myanmar and Thailand thrown in for good measure. Bimstec, in fact, is a bridge between South and Southeast Asia. India is the dominant economy within this grouping with a GDP of $3 trillion and population of 1.4 billion. Bimstec’s combined GDP is $4 trillion, or 4% of global GDP in 2021, and it has 22 % of the world’s population. However, India’s standard of living expressed in terms of income per head of the population is only $2,116 in 2021 and is much lower than that of member countries like Thailand, Sri Lanka and Bhutan. With such fundamentals, closer integration of the Bay of Bengal community promises to be beneficial for member nations.

The main objective of Bimstec is technological and economic cooperation among the member countries, which can be furthered with better connectivity. The fifth summit adopted a Bimstec Master Plan for Transport Connectivity to establish seamless multimodal transport links, transit facilities through the development and modernisation of highways, railways, waterways, and sea and air routes. Although the priority areas of cooperation are security, disaster relief, climate change, dealing with Covid-19 pandemic, power grid connectivity, among others, a big area is the blue economy—working towards sustainable fishing and harnessing of marine resources. In the Bay of Bengal, fish landings hit a high in 2017, but 31.4% of the stock was over-exploited.

Sustainable fisheries are imperative as the Bay of Bengal is home to 30% of the world’s fisher folk. With better regional connectivity, there will be higher flows of intra-Bimstec trade and commerce. As India’s foreign minister S Jaishankar underscored in his address to the fifth summit on March 29, there is a critical need to “work on more ambitious trade facilitation agenda”. In January, Bangladesh hosted a working group meeting to flesh out rules of origin for tradeable goods, which is integral to a Bimstec free trade agreement. Although this has been long in the making, a road map for implementing an FTA at the earliest will undergird closer economic integration and prosperity of this regional grouping.