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Chief Adviser to the interim government Prof Dr Muhammad Yunus is likely to attend this year’s BIMSTEC summit, scheduled to take place in Bangkok from September 2 to 4, highly placed sources said.
Dr Yunus is expected to depart for Bangkok on September 3 and return on September 5, a senior official from the foreign ministry, who is aware of the development, told the FE on Tuesday.
The chief adviser will address the Summit on September 4, he added.
This will be the first foreign visit of Dr Yunus after taking over as head of the interim government.
Additionally, he may hold meetings with other heads of government on the sidelines of the Summit, the official noted.
BIMSTEC Secretary-General Mr Indra Mani Pandey mentioned that while his office usually receives notifications about the participation of member countries, the host country is typically the first to be informed about the attendance of a head of government. He noted that he was abroad and had not yet received official confirmation.
The previous BIMSTEC summit took place in Colombo in March 2022.
The Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) is a regional organisation that was established on 06 June 1997 with the signing of the Bangkok Declaration.
The Bimstec region houses 1.73 billion people and has a combined gross domestic product of US$5.2 trillion.
Initially known as BIST-EC (Bangladesh-India-Sri Lanka-Thailand Economic Cooperation), the organisation is now known as BIMSTEC and comprises seven Member States with the admission of Myanmar on 22 December 1997, and Bhutan and Nepal in February 2004.
BIMSTEC’s institutional evolution has been gradual. Following a decision at the Third BIMSTEC Summit in 2014, the BIMSTEC Secretariat was established in Dhaka, Bangladesh the same year, providing an institutionalised framework for deepening and enhancing cooperation.
Being a sector-driven grouping, cooperation within BIMSTEC had initially focused on six sectors in 1997 (trade, technology, energy, transport, tourism, and fisheries) and expanded in 2008 to incorporate agriculture, public health, poverty alleviation, counter-terrorism, environment, culture, people-to-people contact, and climate change. Subsequently, following steps to rationalise and reorganise sectors and sub-sectors, cooperation was reorganised in 2021 under the following sectors and sub-sectors led by the respective Member States.