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BCIM Economic Corridor
The Bangladesh, China, India and Myanmar Economic Corridor (BCIM) was a proposed road, rail, water and air link connecting India and China through Myanmar and Bangladesh as a corridor.
In 2015, China proposed including the corridor as part of its vision for the Belt and Road Initiative, China's signature global connectivity initiative. The BRI was boycotted by India from the start. In May 2019, the BCIM was not mentioned in a list of 35 corridors and projects in a joint communique issued by state leaders attending the 2nd Belt and Road Forum, indicating the BCIM had been dropped from the BRI. In the same year India has sought to keep the BCIM intact by sending a delegation to the 13th BCIM Forum in Yuxi, noting however the corridor predates the BRI. Ultimately, the corridor was abandoned due to BCIM's ties to the Belt and Road and the sharp deterioration in Sino-Indian relations.
The proposed corridor will cover 1.65 million square kilometres, encompassing an estimated 440 million people in China's Yunnan province, Bangladesh, Myanmar, and West Bengal in Eastern India through the combination of road, rail, water and air linkages in the region. The BCIM envisages greater market access for goods, services and energy, elimination of non-tariff barriers, better trade facilitation, investment in infrastructure development, and joint exploration and development of mineral, water, and other natural resources.
The concept of economic cooperation within the BCIM region was first developed by Rehman Sobhan who advocated that multi-modal transport connectivity and supported by other initiatives and infrastructure development could significantly reduce transaction costs, stimulate trade and investment and consequently accelerate growth and poverty alleviation in this region.
Sobhan's pioneering ideas would eventually lead to the development of the platform in the 1990s which came to be known as the "Kunming Initiative". The first meeting of the Initiative was convened in 1999 in Kunming; presided by a number of representative organisations such as The Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) from Bangladesh, Centre for Policy Research (CPR) from India and Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences in Kunming, China; from the Myanmar side it was the Ministry of Trade which represented the country.
The Kunming Initiative evolved into the BCIM Forum for Regional Cooperation during its first with the objective to create a platform where major stakeholders could meet and discuss issues in the context of promoting economic growth and trade in the BCIM region; identify specific sectors and projects which would promote greater collaboration among the BCIM nations; and strengthen cooperation and institutional arrangements among the concerned key players and stakeholders to deepen BCIM ties.
Over the years, the Kunming initiative developed into what came to be popularly known as the BCIM Forum. Successive BCIM Forums were held annually making a seminal contribution in raising awareness about the potential benefits accruing from the BCIM cooperation. BCIM cooperation also started to feature in intergovernmental discussions, at highest political levels, as was recounted above. The initial vision of the Kunming initiative was to gradually steer the endeavour from an essentially civil society (Track II) to an intergovernmental (Track I) one where political buy-in and intergovernmental ownership would be key to realising the vision and the objectives of the initiative.
One of the most recent developments to the BCIM came to fruition during the meeting between Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in 2013. Li's visit marked the first time high-ranking officials had discussed the trade corridor. Furthermore, earlier in the year, the first ever BCIM car rally was held between Kolkata and Kunming via Dhaka to highlight road connectivity in the four countries.
BCIM Economic Corridor
The Bangladesh, China, India and Myanmar Economic Corridor (BCIM) was a proposed road, rail, water and air link connecting India and China through Myanmar and Bangladesh as a corridor.
In 2015, China proposed including the corridor as part of its vision for the Belt and Road Initiative, China's signature global connectivity initiative. The BRI was boycotted by India from the start. In May 2019, the BCIM was not mentioned in a list of 35 corridors and projects in a joint communique issued by state leaders attending the 2nd Belt and Road Forum, indicating the BCIM had been dropped from the BRI. In the same year India has sought to keep the BCIM intact by sending a delegation to the 13th BCIM Forum in Yuxi, noting however the corridor predates the BRI. Ultimately, the corridor was abandoned due to BCIM's ties to the Belt and Road and the sharp deterioration in Sino-Indian relations.
The proposed corridor will cover 1.65 million square kilometres, encompassing an estimated 440 million people in China's Yunnan province, Bangladesh, Myanmar, and West Bengal in Eastern India through the combination of road, rail, water and air linkages in the region. The BCIM envisages greater market access for goods, services and energy, elimination of non-tariff barriers, better trade facilitation, investment in infrastructure development, and joint exploration and development of mineral, water, and other natural resources.
The concept of economic cooperation within the BCIM region was first developed by Rehman Sobhan who advocated that multi-modal transport connectivity and supported by other initiatives and infrastructure development could significantly reduce transaction costs, stimulate trade and investment and consequently accelerate growth and poverty alleviation in this region.
Sobhan's pioneering ideas would eventually lead to the development of the platform in the 1990s which came to be known as the "Kunming Initiative". The first meeting of the Initiative was convened in 1999 in Kunming; presided by a number of representative organisations such as The Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) from Bangladesh, Centre for Policy Research (CPR) from India and Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences in Kunming, China; from the Myanmar side it was the Ministry of Trade which represented the country.
The Kunming Initiative evolved into the BCIM Forum for Regional Cooperation during its first with the objective to create a platform where major stakeholders could meet and discuss issues in the context of promoting economic growth and trade in the BCIM region; identify specific sectors and projects which would promote greater collaboration among the BCIM nations; and strengthen cooperation and institutional arrangements among the concerned key players and stakeholders to deepen BCIM ties.
Over the years, the Kunming initiative developed into what came to be popularly known as the BCIM Forum. Successive BCIM Forums were held annually making a seminal contribution in raising awareness about the potential benefits accruing from the BCIM cooperation. BCIM cooperation also started to feature in intergovernmental discussions, at highest political levels, as was recounted above. The initial vision of the Kunming initiative was to gradually steer the endeavour from an essentially civil society (Track II) to an intergovernmental (Track I) one where political buy-in and intergovernmental ownership would be key to realising the vision and the objectives of the initiative.
One of the most recent developments to the BCIM came to fruition during the meeting between Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in 2013. Li's visit marked the first time high-ranking officials had discussed the trade corridor. Furthermore, earlier in the year, the first ever BCIM car rally was held between Kolkata and Kunming via Dhaka to highlight road connectivity in the four countries.
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