BIMSTEC links five South Asian states (Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka) with two Southeast Asian states (Myanmar, Thailand), making it a bridge between SAARC and ASEAN geographies around the Bay of Bengal. It was launched in Bangkok in June 1997 as BIST-EC (Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, Thailand Economic Cooperation), became BIMST-EC when Myanmar joined later that year, and took its current name—Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation—in 2004 after Nepal and Bhutan acceded.
The grouping operates under the BIMSTEC Charter, which was signed at the Fifth Summit in Colombo in March 2022 and entered into force in May 2024, giving the organisation formal legal personality for the first time. Its Secretariat is in Dhaka, Bangladesh, established in 2014, and is headed by a Secretary-General drawn from member states on rotation. Decisions are taken by consensus at the Summit (heads of government), Ministerial Meeting, and Senior Officials' Meeting levels.
Cooperation is organised around sectors led by individual member states, including:
- Security, led by India (covering counter-terrorism, transnational crime, and disaster management)
- Connectivity, led by Thailand
- Trade, Investment and Development, led by Bangladesh
- Agriculture and Food Security, led by Myanmar
- People-to-People Contacts, led by Nepal
- Science, Technology and Innovation, led by Sri Lanka
- Environment and Climate Change, led by Bhutan
A BIMSTEC Free Trade Area Framework Agreement was signed in 2004 but its constituent agreements remain largely unconcluded. The bloc has gained renewed Indian policy attention since around 2016, when New Delhi hosted a BIMSTEC outreach summit alongside the BRICS summit in Goa, partly because SAARC processes have stalled due to India–Pakistan tensions. Critics note slow institutionalisation, modest intra-regional trade, and uneven engagement, particularly given political instability in Myanmar after the 2021 coup.
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At the Fifth BIMSTEC Summit in Colombo in March 2022, leaders signed the BIMSTEC Charter, formally giving the grouping legal personality for the first time since its founding in 1997.