On 4 April 2012, the final day of the 20th ASEAN Summit in Phnom Penh, Ms. Yingluck Shinawatra, Prime Minister, attended the 6th Indonesia-Malaysia-Thailand Growth Triangle (IMT-GT) Summit to review progress and discuss future directions of the sub-regional cooperation framework.
The meeting shared the same view that IMT-GT would serve as a building bloc of larger integration processes already taking place in the region, including the ASEAN Community. Therefore, projects under the framework should be designed with this larger goal in mind. The Prime Minister also stressed that IMT-GT should study and develop links and synergies with other regional arrangements.
The Prime Minister suggested that to guarantee success, IMT-GT projects, most notably in the areas of transport and infrastructure, trade and investment, agriculture, tourism, halal industry and human resource development should meet the interests of local stakeholders. She commended the progress made in building transport linkages, namely the feasibility studies for the two bridges linking Narathiwat and Kelantan and the Hat Yai — Sadao Intercity Motorway, and called for more attention to the development of support systems such as the Customs-Immigration-Quarantine databases and cross-border transport agreements.
Prime Minister Yingluck also underscored the need to further develop other areas of cooperation, including tourism, energy, and food security, as well as to identify other potential development partners to complement the support from the Asia Development Bank and Japan.
For further information, please contact the Press Division, Department of Information, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Tel.02-6435170, Fax.02-6435169, E-mail: div0704@mfa.go.th