Foreign Secretary Md Shahidul Haque proposed to host the workshop at the second half of this year at the 17th session of the BIMSTEC Senior Officials’ Meeting (SOM) held on Tuesday in Kathmandu. He was leading a six-member Bangladesh delegation at the meeting which was held after nearly three years, the foreign ministry said in a statement. The foreign secretary also proposed to host a range of BIMSTEC programmes this year which include international conference on blue economy, trade negotiation committee meeting, workshop on climate change, meeting of the ministers of culture, and tourism ministers’ roundtable. He stressed “revitalising the activities of BIMSTEC and to have strong collaboration and meaningful cooperation among the member states, especially on the four areas of cooperation in climate change, technology, counter terrorism and transnational crime and trade and investment”. Born in 1997, the seven-member grouping of Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Thailand connects South Asia with the Southeast Asia, and serves as a platform for inter-regional cooperation between SAARC and ASEAN members. Bangladesh hosts the headquarters in Dhaka. It is now being seen as an alternative to SAARC by some think-tanks following India-Pakistan tension that resulted in the postponement of this year’s summit in Islamabad. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi hosted BIMSTEC leaders at an outreach meet in Goa last year during the BRICS summit. The grouping is now promoting 14 priority sectors of development and common concerns. Those include trade and investment, technology, energy, transport and communication, tourism, fisheries, agriculture, cultural cooperation, environment and disaster management, public health, people-to-people contact, poverty alleviation, counter-terrorism and transnational crimes, and climate change. The 17 Sustainable Development Goals are aimed at eradicating poverty by 2O3O. The foreign secretary also urged the member states to conclude the BIMSTEC Free Trade Area (FTA) negotiations “as early as possible”. Nepalese Foreign Secretary Shankar Das Bairagi, as the current chair, chaired this foreign secretary level meeting.