Excerpts of speech by the British Deputy High Commissioner
to India Dr Alexander Evans at the Young Thinkers' Conference in
Kolkata
The BBIN vision is to improve economic cooperation and
connectivity among four South Asian countries.
But connectivity is not just about roads, railways inland
waterways, or energy transmission lines. That only gets you so
far. It also includes removing barriers and streamlining
processes – thinking about tariffs and customs as connectivity
and the broader regulatory burden on the private sector are key.
The World Bank estimates that intra-regional trade in South Asia
could nearly quadruple to $100 billion if just the barriers were
removed and processes streamlined; boosting physical connectivity
would dramatically boost this further.
BBIN is also about people. This region already has a lot to
connect it – shared systems, shared values, people to people and
cultural links. There is common understanding. As we become
better connected, we understand each other better and there is
strength in our commonality.
It’s not a zero-sum game and it’s not a competition. Done
properly, economic cooperation and connectivity can lead to
sustainable and shared prosperity for everyone.
This doesn’t just mean improved economies – but better security,
better understanding between our nations and more transparent
systems and potential for further co-operation – whether in
disaster management, cyber security or the exchange of ideas and
technology.
How is the UK helping? Part of our work is focused on boosting
regional trade and connectivity across the region to help turn
proximity into a competitive advantage to drive economic growth
and reduce poverty, especially in areas which are poorly
connected and integrated into global markets. That includes work
on:
- physical connectivity and building infrastructure in the
energy and transport sectors (and potentially IT in the next few
years) to integrate lagging areas into regional and global value
chains
- reducing red tape and regulatory burdens to ease the movement
of goods across borders and allow energy to be traded across
national boundaries
- driving investment in key regional value chains through both
regulatory reform and investment identification and investor
matchmaking.
There will be challenges: political objectives and countries
priorities won’t always align. There are security and
cross-border concerns. Part of these conversations as countries
align their economic goals must be to have these difficult
conversations to tackle boundary and water disputes, the
undocumented movement of people and goods and cross-border
incursions.
I hope the discussions today will lead us towards answering some
of these questions.
