The two-day second meeting of the Joint Study Group of the emerging regional cooperation framework-Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar Economic Cooperation (BCIM-EC) begins at the beach town Cox's Bazar tomorrow (Wednesday), reports UNB.
Foreign Secretary M Shahidul Haque will preside over the meeting to be hosted by the Bangladesh government.
The meeting will consider the (national) studies to be presented by each of the four countries outlining perspectives and expectations of each country on the objectives, scope and modalities of cooperation as also cooperation in a number of agreed sectors: trade in goods and services, investment and financing, trade facilitations, energy, multimodal connectivity, sustainable development, human resource development, poverty alleviation, people to people connectivity, said an official release of the Foreign Ministry on Monday.
The meeting would also discuss various aspects of institutional structure of BCIM EC.
The BCIM process took off in 1998 at track II level. In 2013, the high political leadership of the four countries agreed to elevate the BCIM process to inter-governmental level.
Subsequently, the senior officials of the four countries met in Kunming last December at the first meeting of the Joint Study Group of BCIM EC, where among others, they agreed to undertake a detailed study to decide on structure and modalities of cooperation of the Economic Corridor.
The Economic Corridor is generally known to connect the points of Kolkata to Kunming. Its cooperation framework envisions to connect some of the ports and key nodes, cities and growth centres of the four countries through improving and developing key economic infrastructure and facilitate greater movement of people, culture, goods, service, investment, finance.
In the process, the Economic Corridor is expected to unlock parts of the four countries towards reaping greater economic synergies, complementarities and upscale manifold economic opportunities as various investment projects and initiatives roll out.
