Indian Ocean Rim Association meetings begin Tuesday in Indonesia

Member states and dialogue partners of the Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA) will pledge to strengthen cooperation for “security and prosperity” of the region in the upcoming ministerial meeting in Indonesia.

Preparatory meetings of the 15th council of ministers will begin on Tuesday at Padang in West Sumatra of Indonesia, according to the IORA Secretariat, ahead of the foreign ministers meet on Oct 23.

Twenty countries along the Indian Ocean are the members and six countries including China, Japan and the US are dialogue partners of the grouping, home to some of the world’s fastest growing economies driven by large young population.

Half of the world's container ships, a third of the world's bulk cargo traffic and two-thirds of the world's oil shipments travel through the region.

“This is a very important forum to discuss maritime issues exclusively,” Maritime Affairs Secretary at the foreign ministry, retired Rear Admiral Khurshid Alam told bdnews24.com.

“We do not discuss much maritime issues in other regional grouping like SAARC and BIMSTEC. But this is the only forum where we discuss maritime issues exclusively and everything is related to maritime issue like security, safety, trade and disaster,” he said.

State Minister for Foreign Affairs Md Shahriar Alam will lead the Bangladesh side in the ministerial meeting while a business delegation will join an expo before the meeting.

The association’s primary objective is to facilitate trade and investment, promote sustainable economic cooperation and capacity building for the development and prosperity of its members.

According to its Secretariat based in Mauritius, the ministers will discuss “further enhancement of regionalism and greater engagement with dialogue partners” in the meeting.

Commitment to work together for the common purpose of strengthening cooperation for the security and prosperity of the region will be reflected in the ‘Padang Communiqué’.

Australia, Bangladesh, Comoros, India, Indonesia, Seychelles, Iran, Kenya, Madagascar, Malaysia, Mauritius, Mozambique, Oman, Singapore, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Thailand, UAE, and Yemen are the members.

China, Egypt, France, Japan, UK and the US are the dialogue partners.

Somalia will join as the 21st member and Germany will become the 7th dialogue partner this year.

Over the past five years intra-IORA regional trade has grown at almost 10 percent per year.

“Common understanding is more important in maritime cooperation. This (maritime affairs) is not an issue for a single country since the Ocean is connected to many countries,” Secretary Alam said.

“So cooperation is mandatory in maritime affairs. We are ready for all sorts of cooperation,” he said.

Before the main ministerial meeting, the Working Group on Trade and Investment (WGTI), the Indian Ocean Rim Academic Group (IORAG) and the Committee of Senior Officials (CSO) meetings will be held from Tuesday.

These meetings will focus IORA’s six priority areas.

These are maritime safety and security, disaster risk management, trade and investment facilitation, fisheries management, academic, science and technology cooperation, and tourism and cultural exchanges.

Bangladesh is “a very active” member of the grouping. It hosted an IORA workshop for the first time in Dhaka in April this year on microfinance.

Officials at the Secretariat told bdnews24.com good results came out of the meeting and they were working on how these could be further developed.

This year’s meeting also marks the handover of IORA Chairmanship from Australia to Indonesia for the next two years and will welcome South Africa as the incoming Vice-Chair.

Preparations are underway for a summit-level meeting with the IORA heads of state in March 2017 to mark its 20th founding anniversary.