Government officials, experts and academics have put their heads together to give the BCIM EC national plan a final shape to be submitted in its second joint study group meeting in November.
“In the national study plan, we have emphasised on creating regional public goods so that it has direct impact on the well-being of the people in the region,” Foreign Secretary M Shahidul Haque told the Dhaka Tribune.
A review seminar on the BCIM national plan was held yesterday at the Bangladesh Institute of International and Strategic Studies where participants made presentations on seven thematic areas and organisational structure.
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 seven thematic areas.
The first joint working group meeting held in Kunming, China last December decided that four countries would prepare their own national plan in a common format which would be shared and discussed at the second meeting in Cox’s Bazar on November 12-13.
BCIM is not a traditional business bloc as it is circled around a corridor to connect growth and nodal centres of the four countries, Shahidul said.
“In the meeting, all countries will present their reports and after synthesising, one report will be prepared where recommendations of the members will be incorporated,” the secretary said.
At the third working group meeting in Kolkata next year, the synthesised report would be adopted, he said.
The corridor will integrate the economies, enhance competitiveness and harness potential.
The intra-BCIM trade was only $6 billion in 2001, but it shot up to $90 billion in 2011, where China-India bilateral trade was $70 billion, about 77% of the trade figure.
BCIM EC, an initiative under the track II diplomacy, elevated to track I when China and India in May last year publicly announced that they would use the framework to boost connectivity in the region and it was welcomed by Bangladesh and Myanmar.
