“Bimstec would not be much visible to people to the member countries unless and until an FTA is implemented,” he said while inaugurating the Bimstec 21st trade negotiation committee (TNC) meeting at Sonargaon Hotel in the city on Sunday. 

Nineteen officials of the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (Bimstec) member countries -- Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Thailand – participated in the meeting.

The function was also addressed by Commerce Secretary Shubhashish Bose.

Bimstec officials believe if the free trade agreement is implemented, it will help the intra-Bimste trade grow up to US$ 240 billion from the current US$ 40 billion.

Tofail Ahmed said although the framework agreement of the Bimstec was signed long ago in 2004, the countries have failed to end the deal process through signing several required constituent agreements.

“If the Asean FTA can run very well and successful, why the Bimstec won’t be successful? We need to just put our sincere efforts in running the negotiation with utmost sincerity, devotion and consideration of others’ interest in order to make it a win-win for all partner countries,” he said. 

The minister said globalisation and regional integration have been a reality of today’s politico-economic scenario across the globe. 

He mentioned that the Asian countries are actually the front-runners in the regional economic integration initiatives.

Tofail said the Bimstec member countries need to prepare and put hands together to harness the full potentials of the region.

He said Bangladesh has been very much interested about sub-regional and bilateral FTA with different countries as it will graduate from the group of least developed countries (LDCs) in 2024 and there will be no existing market facilities for Bangladesh after its graduation.