Foreign Minister Dr AK Abdul Momen on Thursday 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 Nineteenth BIMSTEC Ministerial Meeting (MM) was held in Bangkok on March 9 in virtual mode.

Delegations from all the Member States of BIMSTEC joined the meeting. Dr Momen led the Bangladesh delegation in the meeting.

The meeting assessed the progress made so far since the Fifth BIMSTEC Summit held on 30 March 2022 including the implementation of various decisions taken during the summit.

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.

It 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.

Cooperation in the Blue Economy will be led by Bangladesh.

At the conclusion of the meeting, the Heads of Delegations issued a ‘Joint Statement’ elaborating actions to be taken in different areas of cooperation to promote active collaborations in matters of mutual interests in the economic, social, technical, cultural and scientific fields to build a prosperous, resilient and result oriented  BIMSTEC.    

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.