INDIA TO FOCUS MORE ON BIMSTEC TIES VIJAYALAKSHMI RAJU BASICS OF LAW Mon, Jun 10, 2019, at ,02:17 PM Minister of External Affairs S. Jaishankar said on June 6 that India will aim to enhance regional cooperation under the BIMSTEC grouping as there have been certain problems with SAARC. Speaking at a seminar, he also said that the implementation of developmental projects in neighboring countries and elsewhere will be one of his key focus areas. In his first public comments after taking charge of the ministry of external affairs, he also said regional connectivity is going to be a key priority for India and BIMSTEC could be a key vehicle for economic prosperity and regional integration. BIMSTEC, Jaishankar said, is witnessing a great deal of positive energy. It was decided to leverage that and invite the leaders of BIMSTEC nations to the swearing-in ceremony of Prime Minister Modi last month, he added. “SAARC has certain problems and we all know what it is. Even if you were to put terrorism issue aside there are connectivity issues, there are trade issues,” he said. He said there was enormous scope for improving India’s record in the implementation of projects and that he is planning to personally monitor the status of various key projects to ensure their speedy implementation. Asked about the US-China trade dispute, Jaishankar indicated that it may present an opportunity for India. What is BIMSTEC? The Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) is a regional bloc comprising seven countries lying in the littoral and adjacent areas of the Bay of Bengal constituting a contiguous regional unity. This sub-regional organization came into being on June 6, 1997, through the Bangkok Declaration. It constitutes five countries from South Asia (Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal and Sri Lanka) and two from Southeast Asia (Myanmar and Thailand). Initially, the economic bloc was formed with four member states with the acronym BIST-EC (Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, and Thailand Economic Cooperation). Following the inclusion of Myanmar on December 22, 1997, during a special ministerial meeting in Bangkok, the group was renamed BIMSTEC (Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and Thailand Economic Cooperation). With the admission of Nepal and Bhutan at the sixth ministerial meeting in February 2004, the name of the grouping was changed to Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC). BIMSTEC currently represents over 1.5 billion people and has a combined gross domestic product of $2.7 trillion. Noting that South Asia was among the least interconnected regions in the world, Jaishankar said India will look towards BIMSTEC to spur growth in the region. Citing continuing support to cross-border terrorism from Pakistan, India has been maintaining that it was difficult to proceed with the SAARC initiative under current circumstances. The last SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) Summit in 2014 was held in Kathmandu, which was attended by Modi. The 2016 SAARC Summit was scheduled to be held in Islamabad. But after the terrorist attack on an Indian Army camp in Uri in Jammu & Kashmir on September 18 that year, India expressed its inability to participate in the summit. The summit was called off after Bangladesh, Bhutan and Afghanistan also declined to participate. The Maldives and Sri Lanka are the seventh and eighth members of the initiative. In 2014, Modi had invited all SAARC leaders, including the then Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif for his swearing-in ceremony, in a major initiative to reach out to the neighborhood. However, this time, the BIMSTEC leaders were invited, which was seen as an attempt to avoid inviting Pakistan for the event.