BIMST-EC meet in Bangkok: India cautious on FTA

Two months into office but Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is apparently still reluctant to make his maiden trip abroad. He is supposed to par...

Two months into office but Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is apparently still reluctant to make his maiden trip abroad. He is supposed to participate in the first summit of the BIMST-EC (Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Thailand Economic Cooperation), scheduled for July 30-31 in Bangkok. The summit was put off in February, as former PM A.B. Vajpayee did not have dates for it. It was then being held in Phuket.

If Singh attends it, this will be his first multi-lateral visit as PM, and will be keenly watched. What also evinces interest is whether India’s suggestion of renaming the BIMST-EC as ‘‘Bay of Bengal Community’’ — or something akin to that — will be accepted by the six other member countries. A change in name has been necessitated owing to Nepal and Bhutan joining the maritime club in February.

During earlier discussions on the summit, Singh is known to have taken a cautious line on Free Trade Agreements (FTAs), which India has already signed with Sri Lanka and is negotiating with Thailand, Singapore and Mercosur. He has indicated that he would like to give more time on the issue of how domestic industry can be protected, even as the proposed FTAs are signed, and has asked Commerce Minister Kamal Nath to be part of his entourage.

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The BIMST-EC formula was evolved in Bangkok in December 1997 to bring member countries on a common economic platform. Six BIMST-EC ministerial meetings have been held so far, including one in Delhi in July 2000, and trade ministers of member countries have also met five times.

During the ministerial meetings, six sectors had been identified for enhanced cooperation: Trade and investment, technology, transport and communication, energy, tourism and fisheries. A member country was put in charge of each sector with India being declared as the ‘‘lead country’’ to oversee the cooperation in transport and communications, as well as tourism.

Ritu Sarin

Ritu Sarin is Executive Editor (News and Investigations) at The Indian Express group. Her areas of specialisation include internal security, money laundering and corruption. Sarin is one of India’s most renowned reporters and has a career in journalism of over four decades. She is a member of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) since 1999 and since early 2023, a member of its Board of Directors. She has also been a founder member of the ICIJ Network Committee (INC). She has, to begin with, alone, and later led teams which have worked on ICIJ’s Offshore Leaks, Swiss Leaks, the Pulitzer Prize winning Panama Papers, Paradise Papers, Implant Files, Fincen Files, Pandora Papers, the Uber Files and Deforestation Inc. She has conducted investigative journalism workshops and addressed investigative journalism conferences with a specialisation on collaborative journalism in several countries. ... Read More