In 1996, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, and Nepal, a subset of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), formed the South Asian Growth Quadrangle (SAGQ) aimed at boosting cooperation in environment, energy and power, trade and investment, transport, and tourism. SAARC endorsed SAGQ in 1997. The initial four member countries then requested ADB assistance to promote economic cooperation in the subregion, leading to the creation of the SASEC Program in 2001.
Maldives and Sri Lanka were welcomed as new member countries in May 2014. Myanmar became the seventh member of SASEC in February 2017. The organization adopted the SASEC operational plan in November 2016 and launched its subregional strategic development road map in April 2017. An update to the operational plan was released in February 2020.
The South Asia Subregional Economic Cooperation (SASEC) program brings together Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, and Sri Lanka in a project-based partnership that aims to promote regional prosperity, improve economic opportunities, and build a better quality of life for the people of the subregion.
The operational priorities are as follows:
Trade Facilitation: (a) Simplify trade documentation, increase automation, and expedite border clearance procedures to facilitate the movement of goods and vehicles: Priority will be given to reduce the overall number of trade documents, apply advanced procedures and practices based on international standards/conventions, and the use of advanced customs information technology (IT) systems to improve trade efficiency
(b) Promote automation in border agencies and facilitate development of national single windows (NSWs): The focus is on promoting automation in border agencies (to enable them to progressively link into an NSW), and in developing an NSW
(c) Strengthen national conformance bodies and develop infrastructure and facilities in sanitary and phytosanitary-related and other border agencies: This will help the countries to trade more efficiently in goods subject to sanitary and phytosanitary–technical barriers to trade measures and improve their access to markets in the region and globally
(d) Develop and implement through-transport motor vehicles agreements: This will aid the seamless movement of cargo and people in the region and reduce the levels of border transshipment
(e) Develop trade-related infrastructure in SASEC ports, land border crossings, and bonded logistics facilities adjacent to land borders and major centers of trade: The development of such infrastructure would improve process efficiency and regulatory effectiveness, and
(f) Build capacity and enhance cooperation and coordination mechanisms among stakeholders in trade facilitation
Energy Cooperation: The focus on improving energy trade infrastructure and developing the regional power market was in response to the need to ease supply constraints and diversify the energy mix of SASEC countries. Complementing these are efforts to develop low-carbon alternatives and energy efficiency and conservation measures. The operational priorities for energy are as follows:
(a) Improve interconnections to access large-scale electricity and natural gas resources
(b) Harness unutilized regional indigenous hydropower potential
(c) Develop low-carbon energy (wind and solar), and
(d) Facilitate bilateral and regional coordination mechanisms and knowledge sharing (e.g., technology transfer development practices toward the regional power trade market)
Economic Corridor Development: ECD involves leveraging of infrastructure connectivity to unlock the full potential of markets. National corridors have initially been identified as having potential synergies with other in-country corridors in the subregion. Under the SASEC OP, the objective is to promote better linkages between these in-country corridors to generate synergies for larger regional impact, with a focus on
(a) Reinforcing existing value chains and developing new value-chain linkages between in-country corridors
(b) Upgrading key transport and trade facilitation infrastructure to improve connectivity between in-country corridors, and
(c) Designing appropriate institutional mechanisms to serve as platforms for coordination and collaboration among governments and various stakeholders
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