India-Myanmar-Thailand corridor to be operational from January next year

By January next year, there will be free movement of cargo and passengers, including personal vehicles on the India-Myanmar-Thailand corridor.

The Governments of India-Myanmar-Thailand will sign their Motor Vehicles Agreement in November 2015, following which its implementation is planned by December this year.“The route will be operational and open to public in 2016, opening the way for free movement of people of these nations,” said an official from the Ministry of Roads, Transport and Highways (MoRTH).

“The opening of this route is crucial to closer regional economic cooperation and integration. This will lead to enhanced regional connectivity by road  and people-to-people contact for furthering the shared goal of overall economic development,” said the official.The meeting of secretaries of Transport Departments of India, Myanmar and Thailand (IMT) was held in Bangkok, Thailand in July this year, where the countries reached a consensus on signing and operationalising the IMT Motor Vehicle Agreement (MVA) which has been under negotiation since March 2015. 

“Although the basics of the MVA were finalised at a meeting of officers in June in Bengaluru, the meeting at Bangkok was primarily to discuss and finalise the Protocol of the IMT MVA,” said the official.“This meeting in Bangkok was preceded by the Customs Departments of the three countries meeting to address the various customs-related issues in the protocol, which were to be finalized under the IMT MVA. A broad consensus was mostly reached,” he said.

The Government is also working on opening similar seamless road channels between Bhutan, Bangladesh, India and Nepal. The officials from the three nations have also met to finalise the protocols.