Dhaka is ready to host the second joint working group meeting of Bangladesh, China, India and Myanmar (BCIM) Economic Corridor on November 12 and 13.
“We have already proposed them to hold the meeting in November to move forward with the BCIM initiative,” Foreign Secretary Md Shahidul Haque told the Dhaka Tribune.
The first joint working group meeting of the BCIM was held in Kunming last December and it was decided that four countries would prepare their own national plan in a common format and it would be shared and discussed in the second meeting in Cox’s Bazar.
The third working group meeting will be held in Kolkata next year while Myanmar proposed to hold next year’s BCIM Forum meeting as well.
“We have prepared our draft report and now we are analysing it,” the foreign secretary said.
Energy, connectivity, investment and finance, trade in goods and service, poverty alleviation and social and human development, sustainable development, and people-to-people contact are the thematic areas where all the countries are working.
The four governments are also working on making their national plan to complement the economic corridor and find out the priorities for each of the countries.
The Foreign Ministry, the Bangladesh Institute of International Strategies and Studies and the Centre for Policy Dialogue are conducting the studies in Bangladesh.
The BCIM economic corridor would not just connect some cities, rather it would link supply and demand in the region, he said.
The proposed BCIM route starts from Kunming in Myanmar, touches Mandalay in Myanmar, Chittagong and Dhaka in Bangladesh, and ends in India’s Kolkata.
The corridor would integrate the economies, enhance competitiveness and harness potential, the official said.
Intra-BCIM trade amounted to only $6bn in 2001 but it shot up to $90bn in 2011, in which China-India bilateral trade accounted for $70bn or 77%.
However, the intra-BCIM figure is deemed as fairly low compared to the total trade of the four countries.
Non-tariff barriers, inadequate trade facilitation, poor institutions and governance, unfavourable banking system and financial instruments, and undervalued currency are the main reason behind the low intra-BCIM trade figure, studies have revealed.
BCIM Economic Corridor, an initiative under track II diplomacy, was elevated to track I when China and India in May last year publicly announced to use the framework to boost regional connectivity.
Bangladesh and Myanmar at that time welcomed the initiative.
