PONTIANAK – 2022 CMGLF BIMP-EAGA Meetings, The Governor of West Kalimantan H. Sutarmidji stated three strategic steps.

The first step is to identify and prioritize concrete projects and directly affect the public. Several sectors to be collaborated are the tourism sector, agriculture, energy, and trading and investment. Second, the collaboration to strengthen the mechanism of all elements in the cooperation. The involvement of all elements of BIMP-EAGA including the private sectors will be the key point in the success of comprehensive and effective  implementation. Third, evaluation mechanism strengthening of some projects to ensure the initiative implementation goes as target planned, the Governor of West Kalimantan stated, on Wednesday (11/25).

The delegations who were present in the forum agreed that the sub-regional cooperations of BIMP-EAGA have to play their roles as the “building block” for the economic integration in the bigger areas in ASEAN. Regions have to be the prime mover in the sub-regional cooperations, in which the regional government serve as the facilitator and the trading world as the implementer will get real benefits from the implementation of the programs.

To support those steps, the head regions along with the delegation of institution partners support the CMGL-F initiative revitalization, as the medium for the head regions to share initiative and collaborate in order to realize the potential regional infrastructure projects. Related to this matter, the delegation of Philippine also expressed that the collaborations in the frame of BIMP-EAGA can also be expanded to reach other concerns out of the government or the businessmen, like parliament.

The Governor also delivered the example of concrete collaborations in the frame of BIMP-EAGA, which are the electrical interconnection of 300 MW capacity and to supply at least 10,000 houses. Furthermore, the collaboration in the borderline of Entikong-Tebedu will be enforced to be the Special Border Economic Zone or other collaborations in other borderlines, such as Nanga Badau and Aruk.