BBIN sits in Dhaka this month

Rezaul Karim | Published: March 22, 2016 00:00:00 | Updated: February 01, 2018 00:00:00

Four south Asian countries will sit in Dhaka at the end of March aiming to finalise the passenger protocol on the Motor Vehicles Agreement (MVA).
Sources said joint secretary level officials of Bangladesh, Bhutan, India and Nepal (BBIN) will take part in the second phase of negotiations to finalise the protocol on MVA for passenger movement.
They said the meeting has been called after Nepal ratified the MVA recently and Bhutan is also likely to ratify the agreement soon.
"We are expecting to finalise the draft protocol on passenger vehicles. But we may discuss the cargo protocol during the meeting," Deputy Secretary of Road Transport and Highways Division Sultana Yasmin told the FE.
Issue relating to the cargo protocol will come up at the meeting for detailed discussion, she added. Â
The protocol on passenger vehicular movement and cargo vehicular movement is a mode of operations, the deputy secretary also said.
BBIN - four members of South Asian Group - signed the MVA on June 15 last year for seamless movement of people and cargo among the neighbouring countries.
Issues of fees and charges for the movement of both goods and passengers have been kept out of the protocol purview as the MVA guides imposing those as per respective country's laws, an official said.
The first two-day meeting on executing the Motor Vehicle Agreement (MVA) was held on September 8-9 last in Dhaka. The meeting concluded without finalising the protocols on the transport of passengers and goods across four South Asian nations.
It was decided in the meeting that each member country would send their opinions on the twin draft protocols by September 23 to the Asian Development Bank (ADB) to help give those a final shape, sources said.
The ADB is supporting formulation of the protocols on the MVA signed among BBIN in June for the sub-regional connectivity.
Joint secretary level officials of Bangladesh, Bhutan, India and Nepal opened negotiations at a city hotel on September 8 last year to draft two separate protocols on transport of goods and passengers.
Meeting sources said delegates failed to reach an agreement on preparing common protocols for all the four nations as they have own priority issues.
The meeting discussed various issues of the protocols in detail. Respective countries needed to review the protocols further. So, the meeting decided to send comments of each of the member countries within two weeks, said an official close to the conclave.
According to the plan, member countries were supposed to complete preparations of bilateral agreements/protocols for implementation of the MVA by July 2015. And negotiations and approval for the bilateral agreements/protocols were supposed to be completed by September last.
Transport ministers from Bangladesh, Bhutan, India and Nepal (BBIN) finally inked the deal at Thimphu in Bhutan on June 15 opening up borders for each other for movement of motor vehicles carrying both passengers and freights.
The joint initiative declared a six-month work plan to make the historic effort effective and launch a cross-border passenger bus service from January 2016.
But it had been deferred for at least six months as two member countries -- Bhutan and Nepal - did not ratify the agreement in their parliaments. But a BBIN car rally was held from November 14 to December 2 crossing the corridors of India, Bhutan and Bangladesh.
Prime Minister of Bangladesh Sheikh Hasina and her Indian counterpart Narendra Modi flagged off the bus service between Dhaka and Shilong on June 6 after signing another MVA between Bangladesh and India during the Indian Prime Minister's visit to Bangladesh.
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