Where two or more countries decide to cooperate in order to achieve cross-border trade, investment, peace, economic growth, prosperity, and stability for their economic region. The countries surrounding a region share their resources for economic development, political stability, growth, security, and peace within the region, with a possibility of economic and financial integration with a common institution.
Published in Chapter:
The BIMSTEC Free Trade Area: Economic Cooperation, Opportunities, and Challenges
Mahboob Muhammad Ali (Dhaka University, Bangladesh) and
Anita Medhekar (Central Queensland University, Australia)
Copyright: © 2022
|Pages: 21
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-5774-7.ch006
Abstract
The Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) is a regional cooperation between Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Nepal, Myanmar, and Thailand since the liberalization of these economies. Member countries need to be more proactive for integrated regional cooperative hubs to enhance trade and investment opportunities in health and other sectors of the economy to cope with the pandemic and its impact. The aim of this chapter is to show how BIMSTEC, a regional cooperative body, can be a driver for socio-economic development, inter-regional trade, and investment opportunities for BIMSTEC countries and cope with COVID-19 and its impact. The BIMSTEC area is home to approximately 1.6 billion citizens accounting to 22% of the worlds inhabitants with a joint gross domestic product (GDP) of 2.7 trillion. Unemployment situation of ‘new poor' can be tackled through close cooperation among the BIMSTEC nations in an effective manner to achieve ‘pareto optimality' through trade and investment among member countries.