Dhaka will support the construction of Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar (BCIM) Economic Corridor to strengthen regional connectivity.
The issue came up during the bilateral talks between Bangladesh Foreign Minister Dipu Moni and her Chinese counterpart Wang Yi in Beijing yesterday.
Talks between the two countries foreign ministers on BCIM is considered significant in the context of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s scheduled visit to Beijing from October 22-24.
Dhaka has been interested about the BCIM project and ready to participate to convert the academic discussion into a reality, said an official of the foreign ministry. “The BCIM used to be a part of Track II Diplomacy but official level talks began after May,” he said.
The economic corridor initiative started in 1999 but it received its first major boost in May this year when Chinese and Indian prime ministers jointly declared that both of them agreed to construct the corridor, converting long-standing academic discussions into a regional cooperation strategy.
A Chinese delegation has recently visited Bangladesh, India and Myanmar and discussed about the future work plan to move forward.
“China had already submitted a memorandum of understanding on BCIM and we gave our inputs during our meeting with them before Eid,” the ministry official said.
It has been decided that the first joint working group meeting of the economic corridor would be held in Kunming in December, he added.
The BCIM zone covers Yunnan province of China, Bihar, West Bengal and Northeast India, Myanmar and Bangladesh with an area of 1.65 million square kilometres.