To boost regional trade and connectivity, India, Bangladesh, and Nepal finalised an enabling memorandum of understanding (MoU) for implementing the long-gestating Bangladesh-Bhutan-India-Nepal (BBIN) Motor Vehicles Agreement (MVA) on March 7-8, 2022. Bhutan participated in the meeting as an observer.
The countries emphasized on the importance of operationalising the BBIN MVA expeditiously to enable seamless movement between them for facilitating trade and people-to-people contact. Operationalising the MVA by concluding the Passenger and the Cargo Protocol will help realise the full potential of trade and people to people connectivity between the BBIN countries by fostering greater sub-regional cooperation.
The delegates agreed on specific steps and timelines to expeditiously finalise the Passenger and Cargo Protocols for the implementation of the BBIN MVA. Asian Development Bank also provided technical and knowledge support to the meeting.
The purpose of the meeting was to examine the Passenger and Cargo Protocols, which are required to put the BBIN MVA for the Regulation of Passenger, Personal, and Cargo Vehicular Traffic between Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, and Nepal into effect, which was signed on June 15, 2015. This is the group’s first gathering since the Covid-19 pandemic broke out. The last meeting took place in New Delhi in February 2020.
| The BBIN MVA has the potential to transform neighbourhood cooperation. For the first time these countries have decided to exchange their traffic rights and provide transit to cargo and passenger vehicles within and across international borders. The main purpose is to develop functional transport corridors and subsequently convert them to economic corridors. These economic corridors are projected to play a key role in both reinforcing and generating new value chains. |
