PM Hasina wants visible results from BIMSTEC

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has joined her Indian counterpart Narendra Modi and other Asian leaders to call for deeper cooperation to produce visible results in development as they met at a summit in Kathmandu on Thursday.

Members of the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation or BIMSTEC can expand cooperation through sustainable development, stability and security and people to people contact, Hasina said in her speech.

The fourth BIMSTEC summit envisages a “peaceful, prosperous and sustainable Bay of Bengal region”.

BIMSTEC is potentially a dynamic region in the world with a 1.5 billion people accounting for almost 22 percent of the global population, and the combined GDP in the region is $2.8 trillion.

Hasina said poverty, climate change and terrorism still remain common problems in the region. As a lead country in climate change, Bangladesh has initiated adaptation and mitigation programmes by creating a Climate Change Trust Fund of $400 million.

@Reuters

However, despite the members’ collective commitment, the BIMSTEC has achieved a few modest successes during the last 21 years.

“We need to consolidate fundamental legal frameworks to carry forward the substantive engagements in our cooperation to produce visible results,” Hasina said.

Hasina referred to the Special BIMSTEC Retreat in Goa in 2016, hosted by Modi, and said it was an important step forward.

“Some of the decisions of the 16-point Agenda of Action adopted in Goa have been executed while many are yet to be realised.”

Global trends have been changing very fast resulting in new dynamics in every sphere, she said. “We have to match the new dynamics and the current reality through three-pronged cooperation—bilaterally, regionally and multilaterally.”

BIMSTEC can be expanded through the creation of a free trade area, investment and energy cooperation, enhancing people-to-people contact and funding mechanism, she said.

“I am happy to mention that some BIMSTEC countries have bilateral arrangement of electricity grid connection. With the participation of others, this can be turned into a BIMSTEC electricity grid,” said Hasina.

Hasina proposed to bring 14 sectors, including trade, science and technology, energy, poverty alleviation, agriculture, security, antiterrorism, climate change, cultural affairs and public health into broader categories—'sustainable development’, ‘security and stability’ and ‘people to people’ contact to make them more synergised, focused and implementable.