Joint Secretary Ramesh Prasad Khanal, who heads Regional Organizations Division at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA), said preparations are underway to host SOM in Kathmandu in April-end. "We have had a preparatory meeting to the BIMSTEC Senior Officials Meeting in Dhaka earlier this month. We are making necessary preparations to host SOM in Kathmandu towards the end of April," Khanal told Republica.
The preparatory meeting to BIMSTEC SOM was held in March 3-4 in Dhaka, Bangladesh after the BIMSTEC Secretariat was established in Dhaka in June, 2014. The meeting led by Joint Secretaries of foreign ministry of all member states - Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Thailand - had discussed various issues including human resource management, budgetary issues and strengthening the functioning of the BIMSTEC Secretariat.
While most of the issues discussed have already been finalized, some issues discussed during the preparatory meeting are yet to be finalized. "The report prepared by the preparatory committee will be submitted to BIMSTEC SOM. The meeting will take decisions on various issues related to its priority areas," he said.
BIMSTEC member states have identified various 13 priority areas including trade and investment, transport and communication, energy, tourism, technology, fisheries, agriculture, public health, poverty alleviation, counter terrorism and transnational crime, environment and natural disaster management, people to people contact and climate change for cooperation.
The third BIMSTEC was held at Nay Pyi Taw, Myanmar, on the theme "Partnership for Harmony and Prosperity". With Nepal chairing the sub-regional body since March, 2014, it is the turn of Kathmandu to host the fourth BIMSTEC Summit.
While the first BIMSTEC Summit was held in Thailand in 2004, the second Summit was held in India in November, 2008. "SOM will propose a date for the fourth summit to be held in Nepal after discussions among member states," said Khanal. Senior government officials said since there is a tradition to host BIMSTEC Summit in a gap of at least four years, Nepal is likely to propose hosting the Summit some time during 2017 keeping in view of the prolonged political transition and other substantive and logistics preparations necessary for hosting the summit.
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