New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will virtually attend the Fifth Summit of the member-nations of the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC), to be held in Colombo, on March 30.
Sri Lanka is the current chair of the regional group.
India’s External Affairs Minister (EAM) Dr. S. Jaishankar will physically attend the BIMSTEC Foreign Ministers Meeting in Colombo on March 29, 2022, as part of his three-day visit to Sri Lanka (March 28-30).
Prior to visiting Sri Lanka, the EAM will spend two days in the Maldives (March 26-27).
The visits to both the countries are at the invitation of the Maldives’ Minister of Foreign Affairs, Abdulla Shahid, and Sri Lanka’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Prof. G.L. Peiris.
Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Thailand are members of the BIMSTEC group.
In 1997, four countries (Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, and Thailand) formed the BIST-Economic Cooperation (BIST-EC). Later that year, with the addition of Myanmar, it was re-titled BIMST-EC. With Bhutan and Nepal also joining, they renamed it again as BIMSTEC, at their first Summit on July 31, 2004.
The BIMSTEC Chairmanship has since rotated, beginning with Bangladesh, which hosted the first summit in 2004, followed by India (2008), Myanmar (2014), Nepal (2018), and now Sri Lanka (2022).
(Venkatesh)