BIMSTEC and SAARC Summit

Indian government announced that it will not participate in the 19th SAARC summit scheduled to be held in Islamabad after the attack on Uri Army base. There was already a rethink afoot on India’s participation after the shabby treatment meted out to Home Minister Rajnath Singh during his visit to Islamabad to attend the SAARC Home Ministers’ meeting. Unlike during past conventions, the Pakistan media blacked out the speech that Singh delivered at the meeting. Unlike in the past when SAARC summits have been postponed due to one member state’s decision not to attend the summit, this time India is not alone. Almost all other member states – Afghanistan, Bhutan and Bangladesh etc.– have decided not to attend the summit in Islamabad and have conveyed their decisions to the current SAARC chair Nepal. The issue of terrorism is not new to SAARC. Although member countries had signed and ratified the 1988 SAARC convention on Terrorism as well as the additional protocol on terrorism in 2003, these have proved inadequate to deal with state-sponsored terrorism. The ambiguous definition of terrorism and the complex clauses of the protocol make the fight against terrorism a non-starter. The issue of terrorism in the region has always been taken up bilaterally, and there are instances of successful bilateral collaboration. This is, however, the first time that there is a strong regional reaction to a member state’s sponsorship of terrorism.

The Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) is a regional organization comprising seven Member States lying in the littoral and adjacent areas of the Bay of Bengal constituting a contiguous regional unity. This sub-regional organization came into being on 6 June 1997 through the Bangkok Declaration. It constitutes seven Member States: five deriving from South Asia, including Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and two from Southeast Asia, including Myanmar and Thailand. Initially, the economic bloc was formed with four Member States with the acronym 'BIST-EC' (Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka and Thailand Economic Cooperation). Following the inclusion of Myanmar on 22 December 1997 during a special Ministerial Meeting in Bangkok, the Group was renamed 'BIMST-EC' (Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Thailand Economic Cooperation). With the admission of Nepal and Bhutan at the 6th Ministerial Meeting (February 2004, Thailand), the name of the grouping was changed to 'Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation' (BIMSTEC).

The regional group constitutes a bridge between South and South East Asia and represents a reinforcement of relations among these countries. BIMSTEC has also established a platform for intra-regional cooperation between SAARC and ASEAN members. The BIMSTEC region is home to around 1.5 billion people which constitute around 22% of the global population with a combined gross domestic product (GDP) of 2.7 trillion economy. In the last five years, BIMSTEC Member States have been able to sustain an average 6.5% economic growth trajectory despite global financial meltdown.

The objective of building such an alliance was to harness shared and accelerated growth through mutual cooperation in different areas of common interests by mitigating the onslaught of globalization and by utilizing regional resources and geographical advantages. Unlike many other regional groupings, BIMSTEC is a sector-driven cooperative organization. Starting with six sectors—including trade, technology, energy, transport, tourism and fisheries—for sectoral cooperation in the late 1997, it expanded to embrace nine more sectors—including agriculture, public health, poverty alleviation, counter-terrorism, environment, culture, people to people contact and climate change—in 2008.

Objectives of BIMSTEC:

As stated in the Declaration of BIMSTEC, its objectives are:

• To create an enabling environment for rapid economic development through identification and implementation of specific cooperation projects in the sectors of trade, investment and industry, technology, human recourse development, tourism, agriculture, energy, and infrastructure and transportation.
• To accelerate the economic growth and social progress in the sub-region through joint endeavors in a spirit of equality and partnership.
• To promote active collaboration and mutual assistance on matters of common interest in the economic, social, technical and scientific fields.
• To provide assistance to each other in the form of training and research facilities in the educational, professional and technical spheres.
• To cooperate more effectively in joint efforts that are supportive of and complementary to national development plans of Member States which result in tangible benefits to the people in raising their living standards, including generating employment and improving transportation and communication infrastructure.
• To maintain close and beneficial cooperation with existing international and regional organizations with similar aims and purposes.
• To cooperate in projects that can be dealt with most productively on a sub-regional basis and make best use of available synergies among BIMSTEC member countries.

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