New Delhi, January 5
The ambitious Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar (BCIM) trade corridor has finally begun to take shape. Top officials of the four countries held their first-ever dialogue on setting up the trade corridor recently in China.

An Indian source, who participated in the meeting, said over the next six months, each country would come up with a joint study report proposing concrete projects and financing modalities before the next meeting of the four nations in June this year in Bangladesh. They are expected to identify specific projects by the end of the year.

The source, who did not wish to be named, said the four countries have come out with some far-reaching proposals that included developing multi-modal transport, such as road, rail, waterways and airways, joint power projects and telecommunication networks. “As a first step, the four country will identify realistic and achievable infrastructure projects to boost physical connectivity,” the source said.

The corridor, it was agreed, will run from Kunming to Kolkata, linking Mandalay in Myanmar as well as Dhaka and Chittagong in Bangladesh.

The BCIM project, which has been the subject of discussions and debates for more than a decade among scholars from the four countries, finally received official support in May last year when Chinese Premier Li Keqiang visited India and discussed it with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

The linking of all four countries by road is expected to further strengthen the notion that the corridor would subsequently open up the whole of the Northeastern region of India to Southeast Asia and China and turn it into a significant channel of trade.

The idea of the trade corridor, that would link the world’s second largest and the third largest economies, was first mooted by a Chinese scholar in the late 1990s. It had received a positive response from all the four countries concerned. However, it failed to make much headway, thanks to the complex relationship between India and China.

Joint initiative

* Over the next six months, each country would come up with a joint study report proposing concrete projects and financing modalities.

* The four countries so far have come out with some proposals that included developing multi-modal transport, such as road, rail, waterways and airways, joint power projects and telecommunication networks