By Sridhar Ramaswamy
A landmark agreement is expected to pave the way for regional integration.
At the 18th SAARC summit in Kathmandu, held in late November 2014, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi stated that regional integration in South Asia would go ahead “through SAARC or outside it, among all of us or some of us.” On June 15, 2015, the transport ministers of four South Asian neighbors – Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, now better known as the BBIN – signed a landmark Motor Vehicles Agreement (MVA) in Thimpu. The agreement is expected to pave the way for a seamless movement of goods and people across their borders, encouraging regional integration and economic development.
Indian Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari commented, “This indeed is a momentous achievement for all the four neighbours. This historic agreement will further promote our cooperation in trade and commerce.” He added, “The Motor Vehicles Agreement is the ‘overarching’ framework to fulfill our commitment to enhance regional connectivity. The agreement will help in creating transport corridors linking the four countries into economic corridors as well as enable transit of passengers and goods along designated key routes in the four SAARC countries, thereby reducing the time-consuming exercise of disembarking of passengers.”
The agreement will be phased in over six months. The first phase will include the preparation of bilateral (and perhaps trilateral or quadrilateral) agreements and protocols for implementation of the MVA, to be completed by July 2015. The second phase will entail negotiation and approval of additional agreements and protocols, by September 2015. This will be followed by installation of the IT systems, infrastructure, tracking, regulatory systems and other tools for implementing the approved agreements, by December 2015, and then by gradual roll out from October 2015.
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