India, Bangladesh and Nepal agree on movement of passenger vehicles under BBIN MVA

Bangladesh, India and Nepal have agreed on the operating procedure for passenger vehicles in the subregion under the Bangladesh-Bhutan-India-Nepal (BBIN) Motor Vehicles Agreement (MVA) signed in June 2015, and will soon complete the internal approval processes for signing the passenger protocol. The participating countries have also agreed to conduct more trial runs for cargo vehicles under the agreement April 2018 onwards. Earlier, as a part of the MVA, trial runs for cargo vehicles were conducted along the Kolkata-Dhaka-Agartala and Delhi-Kolkata-Dhaka routes, which successfully established the economic benefits of the agreement. Bangladesh, India and Nepal have already ratified the MVA and agreed to start its implementation. Bhutan will join after ratifying the agreement. Meanwhile, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) has been providing technical, advisory and financial support to the BBIN MVA initiative as a part of its assistance to the South Asia Sub-regional Economic Cooperation programme, a project-based economic cooperation initiative that brings together South Asian countries such as the Maldives, Sri Lanka and Myanmar.