The Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC), an economic bloc consisting of seven South and Southeast Asian countries, has missed the FTA implementation deadline of July 1, 2006.

Bangladesh, Bhutan, Burma, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Thailand – seven member-states of BIMSTEC had earlier planned the Colombo meeting for May but it was cancelled due to internal problems in Sri Lanka and political turmoil in Thailand.

Now BIMSTEC member-states are going to resume trade negotiations next week in order to finalize the bloc’s Free Trade Agreement (FTA) and propose a new date for its enforcement. Trade Negotiation Committee (TNC) has announced to convene a meeting from July 25 in Colombo and the meeting will last four days.

According to the sources, the upcoming meeting will mainly revolve around outstanding issues of free trade accord on trade in goods and free trade accord on trade in services would be dealt on the sideline.

TNC experts from member states will argue on key trading arrangements such as rules of origin, negative list for tariff reduction and list of items to be opened under the fast track of trade liberalization programme during the meeting. Technical experts will also negotiate on a separate framework of dispute-settlement mechanism.

The TNC will also work out a new date for implementing the FTA on trade in goods which is most likely to be fixed for January 1, 2007.

As for the FTA on trade in goods, they have agreed to open trade under ‘fast track’ and ‘normal track’ of trade liberalization.

Under the fast track, the members have agreed to bring down tariffs to a range of zero to five percent by June 2009 for developing countries and by June 2011 for least developed countries.

Under the normal track, however, they will follow a gradual tariff liberalization programme. The developing countries will have to reduce tariff for each other by June 2010 and with least developed members by 2012.

While the compliance deadline for developing countries is June 30, 2015, for LDC members it is July 2017.

Besides FTA on trade in goods, BIMSTEC members have agreed to kick start free trade area for service trade and investment from July 2007.