Despite the scheduled presence of a 30-member Chinese delegation led by a Senior Vice-Minister of State Development and Planning Ministry, the meeting here next week of the Joint Study Group of the Bangladesh, China, India and Myanmar (BCIM) has evoked little interest. The Indian delegation will be led by a former Ambassador, Rajeet Mitter, and include an Additional Secretary of the Ministry of External Affairs [MEA]. The Bangladesh and Myanmar teams are considerably smaller.
The two-day meeting of the Joint Study Group, a sub-regional group of the BCIM, is to review economic integration of the region focussing on trade and energy cooperation while facilitating the construction of an economic corridor from Kumning in south-west China to Kolkata.
However, none of the sides are very hopeful about the outcome of the Kolkata meeting. Officials of the participating countries told The Hindu that the “interest generated” about the economic corridor in 2013 “is missing.”
The idea of the economic corridor, about 3,000 kilometres in length, from Kunming to Kolkata — via Mandalay in Myanmar, Imphal and Silchar in India, Dhaka and Jessore in Bangladesh, — gained momentum following the meeting in 2013 between Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Two subsequent meetings were held — one in Kunming (2013) and the other in Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh (2014). Though the Study Group was to have met in six months, the meeting will take place next week.
The reasons for the low key meeting are manifold, explained by a former Indian diplomat. “There is a change of government in Delhi which may have triggered some re-thinking on various projects including BCIM,” he said.
Chinese Consul General in Kolkata Ma Zhanwu, however, sounded optimistic. “Compared to our participation in the earlier BCIM meet, we have only scaled it up. A senior Vice Minister is coming with a team of nearly 30 members and many of them are very important in China,” he said.
