In his deliberations, Dr. Momen reiterated Bangladesh’s commitment to the BIMSTEC process and emphasized that BIMSTEC Member States need to work together to realize the huge untapped potentials of the region. As the Lead Country for cooperation in Trade, Investment and Development sector, Dr. Momen outlined Bangladesh’s effort to enhance investment and trade relations across the platform and expressed Bangladesh’s keen interest in finalizing the legal instruments for the BIMSTEC Free Trade Agreement (FTA). He called upon the Member States for greater commitments so that the BIMSTEC FTA could be implemented as early as possible.
The meeting approved the ‘Rules of Procedure’ for all the BIMSTEC mechanisms, including several administrative and financial matters of the BIMSTEC Secretariat for adoption at the Sixth BIMSTEC Summit proposed to be held later this year. The Meeting approved the draft text of the ‘Agreement on Maritime Transport Cooperation’ as well as the ‘BIMSTEC Bangkok Vision 2030’.
The inclusion of Blue Economy, Mountain Economy and Poverty Alleviation under the purview of the reconstituted sectors/subsectors of BIMSTEC cooperation was approved by the meeting. The cooperation in the Blue Economy will be led by Bangladesh.
The meeting discussed the tentative schedule of the Sixth BIMSTEC Summit to be held in November 2023 in Bangkok, Thailand, in which, Bangladesh is supposed to assume the Chairmanship of BIMSTEC.