(LiveMint)
India on Thursday called for greater interlinkages among members of a grouping, straddling South Asian and South-East Asia in trade, transport and digital connectivity as the bloc looks to set its mark as a major growth engine in the Indo-Pacific region. Member states of the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (Bimstec) should join hands to combat terrorism and drug trafficking, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said at the fourth summit of the grouping in Kathmandu.
Bimstec, formed in 1997, has seven members—Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Myanmar, Nepal, Thailand and Sri Lanka. It is home to 1.6 billion people, or nearly 22% of the world’s population, and has a combined gross domestic product of $2.8 trillion. However, the bloc has held summit-level meetings only thrice before the current Kathmandu summit, putting a question mark on its relevance.
In Kathmandu, Modi underlined India’s commitment to the grouping. The Bay of Bengal region was situated “at the confluence” of India’s neighbourhood policy vis a vis South Asia, and New Delhi’s Act East policy is geared at closer cooperation with the dynamic economies of South-East Asia, he said.
