The first joint working group meeting of Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar (BCIM) economic corridor will be held in Kunming in December to translate academic discussionsinto a reality.
“We discussed the modalities of the economic corridor issue with a Chinese delegation on Monday (Sunday),” Foreign Secretary Md Shahidu lHaque, who led the Bangladesh delegation, told the Dhaka Tribune.
The eight-member Chinese delegation led by Deputy Director General of International Department of National Development and Reform Commission Lin Dajian arrived in the city Saturday and the team is scheduled to leave for Myanmar on Monday.
“We gave our inputs on the memorandum of understanding supplied by the Chinese side and we will continue to be engaged,” the secretary said.
The Chinese side had meeting with Indian officials and would also discuss the issue with Myanmar, Shahidul said.
It is the first time formal discussion at the official level started and it discussed about how future engagement at the government level would be held, he said.
“The Kunming meeting would be represented by senior working level officials of the four countries.”
The economic corridor initiative started in 1999 but it got 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.
The initiative was earlier an academic discussion under Track II diplomacy but now it is converted into Track I so that government officials are engaged in discussion.
Foreign Minister DipuMoni is scheduled to visit China after Eid and will have meetings with Chinese officials about BCIM and other issues.
The BCIM zone covers Yunnan province of China, Bihar, West Bengal and Northeast India, Myanmar and Bangladesh with an area of 1.65m square kilometers and a population of 400m.
China and India, the two major players in the region, are parties to the initiative and the success of it would largely depend on how they would react with each other.
“The objective of the BCIM is to have greater connectivity for more economic integration in the region as the corridor would stretch from Kolkata to Kunming through Bangladesh and Myanmar,” said another official of the foreign ministry.
