In an op-ed published by Hindu Business Line, IFPRI South Asia's Devesh Roy, Shahidur Rashid, and Mamata Pradhan write, "Trade and investment are major instruments to attain food security across the BIMSTEC (Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation) member-states, particularly in a climate-affected, post-pandemic world. However, trade and market integration is an area where the performance of BIMSTEC countries has been subpar. The share of all BIMSTEC countries — that include two ASEAN member-states, namely, Thailand and Myanmar — in world trade is less than 4 percent."
The authors add that BIMSTEC's "progress is hindered by a lack of internal integration; countries adjacent to the Bay of Bengal are less integrated today than they were 50 years ago. Further, the situation in BIMSTEC agri-food trade is getting more challenging due to competition with proliferating regional trading arrangements..."
In conclusion, the authors write, "BIMSTEC needs to be recalibrated and repurposed to have a greater focus on the agri-food trade. A complete overhaul of thinking about agri-food trade within the global value chain framework — that includes an openness on both sides (importing and exporting) and scaling up on attributes like quality, safety, and health as product differentiators — is an essential precondition for BIMSTEC to become an effective platform for successful cooperation among the Bay of Bengal countries."
Read the entire op-ed.
