By NNN-Govt Portal,
Colombo : Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) conference followed by the summit is scheduled to be held in New Delhi from the 11th to 13th of this month. The summit is held every three years.
The two day meeting will be attended by the leaders of the BIMSTEC states comprising Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Thailand.
This year’s event is expected to focus on forging closer integration of the member countries that spread across South Asia and South East Asia. The specific areas expected to be covered include trade, counter-terrorism, trans-national crimes, tourism, fisheries and public health.
The leaders are also expected to review progress on the proposed Free Trade Agreement between BIMSTEC member states. The current trade amongst BIMSTEC countries is around USD 20 billion.
Member states of BIMSTEC, established in 1997, accounts for a $810 billion economy, shares about 22% of the world population and 3.64% of the earth’s surface area.
The last summit was held in Bangkok in 2004.
According to the Bangkok Declaration on the Establishment of BIST-EC, the aims and purposes of BIST-EC/BIMST-EC are to create an enabling environment for rapid economic development, accelerate social progress in the sub-region, promote active collaboration and mutual assistance on matters of common interest, provide assistance to each other in the form of training and research facilities, cooperate more effectively in joint efforts that are supportive of, and complementary to national development plans of member states, maintain close and beneficial cooperation with existing international and regional organizations, and cooperate in projects that can be dealt with most productively on a sub-regional basis and which make best use of available synergies.