PM Modi to attend virtual summit of Bimstec today: All you need to know

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will on Wednesday attend the fifth BIMSTEC Summit. The summit, which is being held in virtual mode, will be hosted by Sri Lanka, the current BIMSTEC chair.

To prepare for the summit, meetings of BIMSTEC senior officials were held on March 28 followed by meetings of the BIMSTEC foreign ministers on March 29.

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Times Now reported that the focus topic of the meeting is expected to be challenges that all member countries are facing due to COVID-19 pandemic, the uncertainties within the international system among others.

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“The COVID pandemic related challenges, and the uncertainties within the international system that all BIMSTEC members are facing, imparts greater urgency to the goal of taking BIMSTEC technical and economic cooperation to the next level. This is expected to be the main subject of deliberations by leaders at the summit,” the Ministry of External Affairs said in a statement.

The leaders are also expected to discuss the establishment of basic institutional structures and mechanisms of the group.

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What is BIMSTEC?

The Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation, also known as BIMSTEC, is a regional organisation comprising seven member states lying in the littoral and adjacent areas of the Bay of Bengal constituting a contiguous regional unity.

This sub-regional organisation came into being on June 6, 1997 through the Bangkok Declaration. 

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It constitutes seven countries: five deriving from South Asia, including Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and two from Southeast Asia, including Myanmar and Thailand.

In the last five years, BIMSTEC member states have been able to sustain an average 6.5% economic growth trajectory despite global financial meltdown, according to its website.

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The regional group constitutes a bridge between South and South East Asia and represents a reinforcement of relations among these countries.