What’s Next for BIMP-EAGA in 2018?

In the middle of February, officials from Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines, gathered for another meeting of a decades-old subregional grouping designed to boost economic growth. The strategic planning meeting in Brunei for the Brunei Darussalam-Indonesia-Malaysia-Philippines East ASEAN Growth Area (BIMP-EAGA) saw the four countries move closer to progress on new opportunities and addressing old challenges as they seek to realize their vision for greater subregional cooperation.

BIMP-EAGA, an initiative set up in March 1994, was designed to promote economic subregional cooperation in border areas between the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Brunei. The idea was to turn a relatively underdeveloped region in Southeast Asia into an emerging growth area. The region in question – comprising Palawan and Mindanao in the Philippines; the states of Sabah and Sarawak and the Federal Territory of Labuan in Malaysia; ten provinces on the islands of Kalimantan, Sulawesi, Maluku, and Irian Jaya in Indonesia; and all of Brunei –  boasts a population of 70 million and a land area of 1.54 million square kilometers.

Over the years, there have been some advances, with overall economic growth improving and incremental increases in some areas like trade and tourism. The most recently published BIMP-EAGA government data indicates that between 2010 and 2015, the combined GDP of BIMP-EAGA grew at an average rate of 6.4 percent, merchandise trade increased at an average annual rate of 1.2 percent, and tourist arrivals grew by 9.5 percent. But a whole spectrum of challenges remain that continue to limit the extent of collaboration, from the lack of basic border trade infrastructure to facilitating economic interaction to the prevalence of security challenges that undermine prosperity.

Last year, during the Philippines’ chairmanship of BIMP-EAGA, we saw some further progress, most notably the adoption of the BIMP-EAGA Vision 2025. That plan charted out how the countries would work to create a resilient, inclusive, sustainable, and economically competitive subregion (R.I.S.E) over the next few years, in areas ranging from tourism to agroindustry to green manufacturing. In December, officials from the four countries met in Tarakan in North Kalimantan for the 21st BIMP-EAGA Ministerial Meeting and agreed to advance a number of priority projects worth about $21.4 billion, including the Manado-Bitung toll road, Makassar port, and the Bitung special economic zone.

From February 11-14, representatives from the four countries met again for the latest iteration of their Strategic Planning Meeting (SPM) in Brunei. The objective of the meeting, which was held at the Brunei International Convention Center, was to begin operationalizing projects previously advanced under BIMP-EAGA Vision 2025. More than 200 delegates from the BIMP-EAGA member countries attended the meeting, including representatives from each government’s ministries and institutions responsible for working groups as well as local government representatives and businessmen.

The latest BIMP-EAGA SPM took stock of existing cooperation and planned for future collaboration in eight clusters – transportation, trade and investment, information communication and technology, tourism, agriculture, energy, environment, and sociocultural issues. Senior officials were presented with cluster-specific and convergence projects – from the establishment of new air and sea links to cross-border power interconnectivity to green cities development – and offered guidance and directives regarding implementation and coordination with the private sector.

Further inroads are expected in the coming months as well that will inject additional momentum into specific projects as well as BIMP-EAGA cooperation more generally. For instance, the new Buliluyan-Palawan-Kudat-Malaysia roll-on, roll-off (RoRo) sea trade link is expected to open sometime in March, following the launch of the Davao-General Santos-Bitung RoRo shipping route last April. Direct flights between Zamboanga and Sandakan are expected to commence within the first half of 2018, following a postponement last October.

Individual countries are also mulling new initiatives that could also have wider effects. For instance, in the Philippines, some are pushing for the establishment of a barter trade zone to allow Mindanao businessmen to trade with neighboring islands and sell imported items within the region without tariff duties as part of the Tawi-Tawi Special Economic and Freeport Zone Program and the Bangsamoro Development Corridor. Mindanao Development Authority (MinDA) Chairman Datu Abul Khayr Alonto has said that should the proposed idea of a new Barter Trade Facilitation Center be approved, it would not only create jobs and business for the people but also promote trade and commerce within BIMP-EAGA as well.

Meanwhile, in Malaysia, the government is examining how to better integrate Sabah into BIMP-EAGA. Sabah’s role has long been limited due to a mix of political obstacles as well as security issues that limit barter trade at sea. Last June, Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Datuk Seri Abdul Rahman Dahlan said that the Malaysian government was working with the Asian Development Bank (ADB) to examine options for addressing current challenges, including building up the infrastructure for border trade as well as working to boost monitoring of border controls, including customs, immigration, and quarantine (CIQ).

These initiatives will no doubt take time to concretize, and as with some others that we have seen in the past, they may be beset by delays or other challenges that will take time to confront. As Alonto himself has rightly said, for all the challenges that confronts it, BIMP-EAGA is a tangible demonstration of the effort governments are putting into true bottom-up socioeconomic integration within ASEAN. If the organization is to truly realize its aspiration of becoming a “people-centric” ASEAN, it will need subregional efforts like BIMP-EAGA to take off in order to bring greater peace and prosperity to all of its inhabitants, rather than just a small slice of them.