12th BCIM Forum end in Yangon and calls for Project based Cooperation

PR, KalimNews, 13 February 2014:The 12th Forum of Bangladesh, China, India and Myanmar (BCIM) on Economic Cooperation concluded at Yangon, Myanmar on 12th February 2015. 

The Forum started with the Cultural show hosted by Ministry of Tourism and Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Government of Myanmar. This also included an opening song by Ms Myanmar. 

The Delegations were received by the Deputy Foreign Minister of Myanmar His Excellency U Thant Kyaw. The Chinese delegation was led by His Excellency Vice Governor of Yunan Province. Besides the high level delegations from these four countries, the Ambassadors of Bangladesh, China and India also participated in the meeting. Prof. Mahendra P Lama was one of the member of the Indian delegation team.

The Forum discussed three vital issues viz., poverty alleviation programmes, cross border connectivity and people to people contacts. The Forum called for the specific project based approach to cooperation among these countries.

In the poverty alleviation programmes the Forum decided to learn from each other’s success stories on poverty alleviation programmes and start replications of some of these programmes. 

On the issues of connectivity, the Forum agreed to support the Economic Corridor project among these four countries in the eastern segments of India and Bangladesh and Western segments China and Myanmar. It also decided to have a bus service between Kolkata, Dhaka, Yunan (China) and Yangon (Myanmar). 

On the people to people front it called for cooperation in sectors like education, tourism, health and energy and communications wherein a large number of NGOs and private sector are also likely to participate.