Brunei Hosts BIMP-EAGA Meet
By Maya Salleh & Izam S. Ya'akub

Bandar Seri Begawan - The two-day Informal BIMP-EAGA Senior Officials Meeting began yesterday at the Empire Hotel and Country Club and would draw to a close today.

Ministry of Industry & Primary Resources hosted the meeting.

The meeting discussed the follow-up decisions made during the 8th BIMP-EAGA Ministerial Meeting and the BIMP-EAGA Leaders Meeting held in Bali, Indonesia.

The Ministerial Meeting had focused on efforts taken to revitalise the sub-region such as the decision to re-group the BIMP-EAGA Working Groups in order to focus their efforts on four clusters which demonstrate the best potential for growth.

These clusters see the sultanate involved with Transportation and Infrastructure Development, Natural Resources Development, Joint-Tourism Development and Small Medium Enterprises Development.

As part of the follow-up to the BIMP-EAGA Leaders Meeting, senior officials participating in the course of dialogue will be addressing the direction of development in the sub-region as a review of the activities undertaken thus far by BIMP-EAGA.

The senior officials are also expected to deliberate on the further cooperation with a number of Asean dialogue partners, who have pledged support to developing BIMPEAGA, such as the People's Republic of China, Japan and the Republic of Korea.

The talks held over the course of two days are also tackling issues relating to the activities of the newly-established BIMP-EAGA Facilitation Centre, which is tasked to serve the link among the National Secretariats and the BIMP-EAGA in prioritising, implementing and monitoring of programmes and projects and also as an information and database centre for BIMP-EAGA.

In its role as Regional Development Advisor, the Asian Development Bank is going to present at the informal meeting the statuses and updates of a number of technical assistance programmes undertaken on a range of issues in support of the ongoing revitalisation efforts.

These issues include transportation, information exchange and networking of SME sectors which continue to be robust in BIMP-EAGA. -- Courtesy of Borneo Bulletin

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