Colombo: Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina of Bangladesh has called upon the BIMSTEC leaders to work towards finding common strategies to rebuild a sustainable and resilient Bay of Bengal region by tapping the full potential of the region.
Addressing the 5th summit of the BIMSTEC virtually from Dhaka Prime Minister Hasina placed a three-point proposal at the summit urging the leaders to make the process fully functional by activating all the 14 sectors of cooperation.
In her proposal Sheikh Hasina called for the immediate operationalisation of the BIMSTEC Free Trade Area (FTA) for which framework agreement was adopted in 2004 and other decisions like BIMSTEC centres and entities relating to disaster management, energy, cultural commission, connectivity projects, energy grid connectivity among others.
She also called for finalising the remaining legal instruments and policy documents to give momentum to the work of the organisation. Prime Minister Hasina proposed that BIMSTEC should also expand its partnership with outside entities to address the emerging threats and seize new opportunities, reports the official news agency BSS.
The 5th summit meeting at Colombo adopted the BIMSTEC Charter on Wednesday. According to the Charter, the organisation will hold its summit meeting every two years and Foreign Ministers meeting every year.
The Charter gives the grouping an international identity and lays out the basic institutional architecture through which it will carry out its work.
The BIMSTEC summit also adopted the Master Plan for Transport Connectivity which is a vision to lay out a seamless multi-modal connectivity network across the member countries of the organisation.
The summit signed three legal documents including the convention on mutual legal assistance in criminal matters, MoU on Mutual Cooperation between Diplomatic Academies/Training Institutions and Memorandum of Association (MoA) on the Establishment of BIMSTEC Technology Transfer Facility (TTF) in Colombo.
The Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) is a regional organisation. Established in 1997, it comprises seven member states including Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Thailand lying in the littoral and adjacent areas of the Bay of Bengal.
