The Agreement Establishing the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA) entered into

force on 30 May 2019 for the 24 countries that had deposited their instruments
of ratification. This date marked 30 days after 22 countries had deposited their ratification
instruments with the African Union Commission (AUC) Chairperson – the designated depositary
for this purpose, as stipulated in Article 23 of the Agreement.

The 22-country threshold in conformity with legal provisions was reached on 29 April 2019 when
Sierra Leone and the Saharawi Republic deposited their instruments of ratification with the
depositary. To date, 30 countries have both signed and approved ratification of the AfCFTA
Agreement. Of the 55 AU member states, only Eritrea has yet to sign.

The operational phase of the AfCFTA was subsequently launched during the 12th Extraordinary
Session of the Assembly of the African Union in Niamey, Niger on 7 July 2019. The AfCFTA will
be governed by five operational instruments, i.e. the Rules of Origin; the online negotiating
forum; the monitoring and elimination of non-tariff barriers; a digital payments system and
the African Trade Observatory.

Trading under the AfCFTA Agreement was due to commence on 1 July 2020, but as a result of the
COVID-19 global pandemic, this date is being postponed (a new date is yet to be confirmed by
the African Union Commission).

The main objectives of the AfCFTA are to create a single continental market for goods and
services, with free movement of business persons and investments, and thus pave the way for
accelerating the establishment of the Customs Union. It will also expand intra-African trade
through better harmonization and coordination of trade liberalization and facilitation and
instruments across the RECs and across Africa in general. The AfCFTA is also expected to
enhance competitiveness at the industry and enterprise level through exploitation of
opportunities for scale production, continental market access and better reallocation of
resources.
About BIMSTEC

Setting
The Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic
Cooperation (BIMSTEC) is a regional organization comprising seven
Member States lying in the littoral and adjacent areas of the Bay of
Bengal constituting a contiguous regional unity. This sub-regional
organization came into being on 6 June 1997 through the Bangkok
Declaration. It constitutes seven Member States: five deriving from
South Asia, including Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and
two from Southeast Asia, including Myanmar and Thailand. Initially, the
economic bloc was formed with four Member States with the acronym
‘BIST-EC’ (Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka and Thailand Economic
Cooperation). Following the inclusion of Myanmar on 22 December 1997
during a special Ministerial Meeting in Bangkok, the Group was renamed
‘BIMST-EC’ (Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Thailand Economic
Cooperation). With the admission of Nepal and Bhutan at the 6th
Ministerial Meeting (February 2004, Thailand), the name of the grouping
was changed to ‘Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical
and Economic Cooperation’ (BIMSTEC).

The regional group constitutes a bridge between South and South East
Asia and represents a reinforcement of relations among these countries.
BIMSTEC has also established a platform for intra-regional cooperation
between SAARC and ASEAN members. The BIMSTEC region is home to around
1.5 billion people which constitute around 22% of the global population
with a combined gross domestic product (GDP) of 2.7 trillion economy.
In the last five years, BIMSTEC Member States have been able to sustain
an average 6.5% economic growth trajectory despite global financial
meltdown.

Bay of Bengal
The objective of building such an alliance was to harness shared and
accelerated growth through mutual cooperation in different areas of
common interests by mitigating the onslaught of globalization and by
utilizing regional resources and geographical advantages. Unlike many
other regional groupings, BIMSTEC is a sector-driven cooperative
organization. Starting with six sectors—including trade, technology,
energy, transport, tourism and fisheries—for sectoral cooperation in
the late 1997, it expanded to embrace nine more sectors—including
agriculture, public health, poverty alleviation, counter-terrorism,
environment, culture, people to people contact and climate change—in
2008.

BIMSTEC Mechanism

The Bangkok Declaration provides for the following institutional

mechanisms:
•  Annual Ministerial Meetings, to be hosted by the Member States on
the basis of alphabetical rotation.
•  Senior Officials Committee, to meet on a regular basis as and when
required.
•  BIMSTEC Working Group, the lower tier of the BIMSTEC process
comprising Ambassadors/Representatives from Member States to carry on
the work in between Annual Ministerial Meetings.
•  Specialized Task Forces and other mechanisms as deemed necessary by
the Senior Officials to be coordinated by Member States, as
appropriate.

BIMSTEC Priority Sectors

Six priority sectors of cooperation were identified at the 2nd Ministerial Meeting in Dhaka on 19
November 1998. They include the followings:

Trade & Investment

Transport & Communication

Energy

Tourism

Technology

Fisheries

After the 8th Ministerial Meeting in Dhaka on 18-19 December 2005, a number of new areas of
cooperation emerged. The number of priority sectors of cooperation increased from 6 to 13. The 7
new sectors were discussed in the 1st BIMSTEC Summit and there has been various activities to
enhance those co-operations ever since.The sectors are as follows;

Agriculture

Public Health

Poverty Alleviation

Counter-Terrorism & Transnational Crime

Environment & Disaster Management

People-to-People Contact

Cultural Cooperation

The thirteenth Session of the BIMSTEC Senior Officials’ Meeting recommended the inclusion of
Climate Change as the 14th priority area of cooperation. The eleventh BIMSTEC Ministerial Meeting
held in New Delhi in November 2008 endorsed this recommendation.

Climate Change

Sectors Lead Countries

1. Trade & Investment/Sub-sector Bangladesh

2. Technology/Sub-sector Sri Lanka

3. Energy/Sub-sector Myanmar

4. Transportation & Communication/Sub-sector India

5. Tourism/Sub-sector India

6. Fisheries/Sub-sectorThailand
 7. Agriculture/Sub-sector Myanmar

8. Cultural Cooperation/Sub-sector Bhutan

9. Environment and Disaster Management/Sub-sector India

10. Public Health/Sub-sector Thailand

11. People-to-People Contact/Sub-sector Thailand

12. Poverty Alleviation/Sub-sector Nepal

13. Counter-Terrorism and Transnational Crime/Sub-sector India

14. Climate Change Bangladesh

Group of Seven (G-7)

What Is the Group of Seven (G-7)?
The Group of Seven (G-7) is a forum of the seven countries
with the world's largest developed economies—France, Germany,
Italy, Japan, the United States, the United Kingdom, and
Canada—whose government leaders meet annually on international
economic and monetary issues. The Presidency of the G-7 is
held by each of the member countries in turn.

Russia was formerly a member (when it was the Group of Eight

or G-8), but was removed in 2014 when it annexed the region of
Crimea illegally from the Ukraine. The European Union (EU) is
sometimes considered to be a de-facto eighth member of the G-
7, since it holds all the rights and responsibilities of full
members except to chair or host the meeting.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

 The Group of Seven (G-7) is an intergovernmental

organization that meets periodically to address
international economic and monetary issues.
 G-7 countries include the U.S., U.K., France, Germany,
Italy, Canada, and Japan.
 The G-7 was formerly referred to as the G-8 because
Russia, one of the original eight, was suspended from the
group in 2014 after illegally annexing Crimea.
 The G-7 is not an official, formal entity and, therefore,
has no legislative or authoritative power to enforce the
recommended policies and plans it compiles.

Role of the Group of Seven (G-7)

The origins of the group date back to the early 1970s, when
leaders of the U.S., U.K., France, West Germany, Italy, and
Japan met informally in Paris to discuss the
then recession and oil crisis. Over the years, new members
joined, starting with Canada in 1976, and then Russia in 1997
before being ejected in 2014.

The major purpose of the G-7 is to discuss and sometimes act

in concert to help resolve, global problems, with a special
focus on economic issues. The group has discussed financial
crises, monetary systems, and major world crises such as oil
shortages.

The G-7 has also launched initiatives to fund issues and

relieve crises where it sees an opportunity for joint action.
Those efforts include several aimed at debt relief for
developing nations.  In 1996, working with the World Bank, the
G-7 launched an initiative for the 42 heavily indebted poor
countries (HIPC), along with a Multilateral Debt Relief
Initiative (MDRI), a 2005 pledge to cancel the International
Development Association debt of countries that have gone
through the MDRI program.

In 1997, the G-7 provided $300 million to the effort to build

the containment of the reactor meltdown at Chernobyl. In 1999,
the G7 decided to get more directly involved in "managing the
international monetary system" by creating the Financial
Stability Forum of major national financial authorities such
as finance ministries, central bankers, and international
financial bodies.

Birth of the Group of Seven (G-7)

The G-7 has its roots in an informal meeting of the finance
ministers of France, Germany, the U.S., Great Britain, and
Japan (the Group of Five) in the wake of the 1973 oil crisis.
That, in turn, inspired French President Valéry Giscard
d’Estaing to invite the leaders of those countries, plus
Italy, to Rambouillet in 1975 for further discussions on
global oil, this time with the country's leaders joining the
finance ministers, an attendance roster that has endured.

The next year, Canada was invited to join the group and the
first meeting with all G-7 nations, hosted by the United
States, was held in Puerto Rico in 1976.