Regional Trade And Agricultural Transformation in the Bay of Bengal Countries
 

IFPRI-South Asia is implementing a new program for Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) countries supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The program will focus on improving trade, poverty and food security, and climate change. It will undertake research studies such as the seasonality in trade flows, the impact of COVID-19 on food trade, and the trade competitiveness of member countries in specific food value-chains in BIMSTEC countries.

BIMSTEC is a regional organization formed in 1997. It comprises seven member states: five from South Asia, i.e., Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and two from Southeast Asia, Myanmar, and Thailand. Agriculture is the largest source of employment in all BIMSTEC countries, and the incidence of poverty is the highest among farmers and farm laborers. Poor households in the region spend a large share of their income on food. Food prices, therefore, have a significant impact on poverty and food and nutrition security. Farmers’ incomes can go up and the availability and affordability of nutritious foods can improve with an increase in regional trade. More trade can also reduce producers’ and consumers’ vulnerability to weather and price shocks. All BIMSTEC countries are also highly vulnerable to climate change because of their location, high levels of poverty, and high dependence on agriculture. Trade policies can help in rationalizing and diversifying cropping patterns, make diet diversification less expensive, and raise incomes of farmers by integrating them into the regional value-chains.
 

We developed a conceptual framework for understanding the linkages based on possibilities of cooperation across different objectives and work areas that form the core of BIMSTEC partnerships to assess the structure of cooperation including the potential outcomes in the multi-sectoral technical and economic cooperation realm. We condensed the 14 work areas into three bidirectionally linked relationships in the fundamental areas comprising trade and investment (economic linkage), environment and planetary health (climate/environment linkage), and poverty and food security (social linkage).

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Increasing capacity on evidence-based policy analysis through CGE modeling training in BIMSTEC countries
 

The International Training Program on Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) Modeling in the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) countries launched on April 4, 2022. Organized by IFPRI-South Asia in partnership with the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) and funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), the training was an output of the program on Regional Trade and Agricultural Transformation in the Bay of Bengal countries project. Several researchers and scientists from leading think tanks and research institutions in India, Bangladesh, and Nepal, attended the training and there was balanced gender representation—a remarkable occurrence for a modeling workshop.

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National partners meeting: Regional trade and agricultural transformation in the Bay of Bengal countries

In collaboration with IFPRI’s South Asia Regional Office, the Research and Information System for Developing Countries (RIS) organized a virtual meeting of national partners, to deliberate on collaborative studies, capacity strengthening, and policy communication related to food and agricultural trade in BIMSTEC countries. The partnership aims to provide meaningful policy insights to BIMSTEC countries for promoting their global and intraregional trade of agricultural products.

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