Prospects of Bangladesh in BIMSTEC

The Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) offers Bangladesh a much needed regional platform to address some of its major concerns, such as climate change induced effects, food and energy securities, upgradation of cross-border transport linkages, and harmonisation and liberalisation of trade procedures. There is a growing realisation in Dhaka that these national interests demand greater engagement with countries beyond South Asia.

Bangladesh has been calibrating its foreign policy priorities since the early 2000s to integrate the country with the fastest growing economies of Southeast and East Asia. The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) has not succeeded in fulfilling the expectations of Bangladesh, which played an instrumental role in its formation. Besides, the economic uncertainties stemming from globalisation prompted the Bangladeshi policy makers to seek greater collaboration with the nations in its extended neighbourhood.

BIMSTEC is a unique regional organisation that connects South and Southeast Asia. It comprises five littoral states of the Bay of Bengal – Bangladesh, Thailand, Myanmar, India and Sri Lanka, and two landlocked Himalayan nations – Nepal and Bhutan. BIMSTEC accounts for $2.5 trillion in GDP, 21% of the global population and 3.64% of the world's surface area. This regional grouping was set up on June 6, 1997 in Bangkok to promote economic and technical cooperation and people-to-people relations between the five South and two Southeast Asian nations.

In order to realise these goals, BIMSTEC has identified 13 priority sectors, including trade and investment, transport and communication, counter-terrorism and transnational crimes, energy, climate, agriculture, poverty alleviation, tourism, public health and people-to-people contact. Bangladesh is the lead country for three areas – trade, investment, and climate, and has reiterated its fullest cooperation in this regard during the successive BIMSTEC ministerial meetings and summits.

Bangladesh maintains friendly ties with almost all the neighbouring nations. This allows the country to play a bigger role in regional affairs. The setting up of the BIMSTEC secretariat in Dhaka is in a way recognition of Bangladesh's rising importance in an inter-regional framework for cooperation. While inaugurating the secretariat on September 13, 2014, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina expressed the hope that such an initiative would lead to deeper and broader engagement among the seven nations. The opening of the secretariat was an important milestone in the institutional development of BIMSTEC.

The member nations decided to establish the permanent secretariat in January 2011 and Dhaka was unanimously chosen as the location. The development assumed significance since it was the first ever headquarter of any regional organisation in Bangladesh. The establishment of the secretariat was viewed by many as a diplomatic victory for Bangladesh. The central location of Bangladesh in the Bay of Bengal presents the country an added advantage to play a key role in boosting trade, investment, connectivity and technical cooperation in the BIMSTEC region.

But at the same time, Bangladesh currently faces serious threats to environment, food security and livelihood of millions in the Ganga-Brahmaputra-Meghna Delta region due to climate change and the country requires the crucial support of the international community particularly at the regional level to mitigate them. In this context, BIMSTEC offers Bangladesh a new avenue for multilateral cooperation to deal with the threats posed by climate change. The Hasina government has already underscored the need for greater BIMSTEC cooperation in the agriculture sector, which is facing the worst effects of climate change.

Addressing the Third BIMSTEC Summit in Nay Pyi Taw on March 4, 2014, Hasina said that to ensure sustainable development, it was necessary to mobilise collective efforts to monitor and take unified stand to seriously consider the adverse impacts of climate change. The Bangladesh premier reminded the member nations that a rise in one degree Celsius due to global warming could submerge one-fifth of the country's territory, forcing 30 million people to become "climate migrants". It is expected that Bangladesh, the lead country for climate sector, will be able to garner the support of the BIMSTEC members in its climate change mitigation efforts.

Moreover, Bangladesh believes that the plans envisaged under the BIMSTEC could secure its energy needs. The BIMSTEC has enormous potential for hydropower in the Himalayan region and hydrocarbon in the Bay of Bengal. Bangladesh, which has been facing acute shortage of electricity and fuel for long, urged the member nations to explore ways for proper utilisation of huge energy resources especially hydro-electric through bilateral and trilateral collaborations.

A number of South Asian nations, including Bangladesh, have evinced keen interest in expanding economic cooperation and trade with the two Associations of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) members around the Bay of Bengal as SAARC became increasingly ineffective over the years. In March 2011, the BIMSTEC members agreed to create a free trade zone by liberalising trade in goods, services and investment. However, some vital trade-related issues like reduction and elimination of tariffs and granting of flexibility to the LDCs are yet to be finalised for signing a framework agreement on the BIMSTEC free trade area. The experts are of the opinion that the proposed BIMSTEC free trade agreement has the potential to generate inter-regional trade worth more than $50 billion.

Bangladesh also desires to make use of the regional grouping for promoting trade and upgrading connectivity with neighbouring Myanmar that serves as the country's gateway to Southeast Asia. The Bangladesh-Myanmar trade remained stagnant for many decades due to the absence of land connectivity and shipping between the two nations. The Bangladeshi business and industry leaders think that their country stands to benefit immensely from the coastal shipping line as the import of basic commodities would be much cheaper, easier and faster. They are optimistic that the bilateral trade that presently stands at $100 million annually is poised to reach $500 million after the opening of the coastal shipping line. Both the neighbours intend to achieve the target of $1 billion by 2020.

The seven geographically contiguous BIMSTEC member nations enjoy close socio-cultural, commercial and historic ties among them. It is imperative that they expedite the process of building cross-border transport infrastructure and logistics for boosting commercial ties and people-to-people contact and facilitating rapid economic growth in the BIMSTEC region. Bangladesh could earn huge revenue in the form of transit fess once the BIMSTEC plans are fully implemented. A speedy and amicable resolution of the issues pertaining to the free trade agreement could accelerate the process of South Asia's economic integration with the robust markets of ASEAN. The member nations also need to guard against periodic domestic unrest that has slowed down the progress of the BIMSTEC.