Explanation:

 About BIMSTEC:
• The initiative to establish the Bangladesh-India-Sri Lanka-Thailand Economic Cooperation (BISTEC) was undertaken by Thailand in 1994 to explore economic cooperation on a sub-regional basis involving contiguous countries in South-east and South Asia around the Bay of Bengal. Myanmar was admitted in December 1997 and the initiative was renamed as BIMSTEC.
• Nepal was granted observer status by the second Ministerial Meeting in Dhaka in December 1998. Subsequently, full membership has been granted to Nepal and Bhutan in 2003
• The Bangkok summit in 2004 agreed to change the acronym of BIMSTEC to Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation.
• The framework agreement on the BIMSTEC Free Trade Area (FTA) was signed in 2004, but it was not made operational.
• A number of issues—such as modalities of tariff reduction and elimination, size of the negative list, criteria for rules of origin, mechanism of dispute settlement, safeguard measures, customs operations and negotiations on the agreements on service and investment—are yet to be finalized.
• The member countries established an institutional arrangement in the Trade Negotiating Committee (TNC) in 2004 for conducting negotiations to finalize these issues, as stipulated in the framework agreement. However, even after 19 rounds of negotiations, stretching over 10 years, they have not been able to reach a consensus over issues such as market access or a dispute settlement mechanism.
• The third Bimstec summit was held in March last year in Naypyitaw, Myanmar’s capital. In the summit declaration, the leaders had directed the Bimstec TNC to expedite its work for the conclusion of the agreement on trade in goods by the end of 2014, and to continue its efforts for early finalization of the agreement on services and investments.