BIONAS PROJECT MASTERPLAN
HISTORY
1. In 1992, then President Fidel V. Ramos of the Philippines proposed the expansion of economic cooperation in the border areas with Indonesia and Malaysia and with Brunei Darussalam in a major economic and diplomatic initiative in the ASEAN. The leaders of Brunei, Indonesia, and Malaysia favorably received this Philippine initiative that eventually led to the creation of a subregional growth area named the Brunei Darussalam-Indonesia-Malaysia-Philippines East ASEAN Growth Area or BIMP-EAGA. BIMP-EAGA was formally launched on March 24, 1994 in Davao City in Mindanao, Philippines.
2. The growth area initially comprised the entire sultanate of Brunei Darussalam; the provinces of East and West Kalimantan, and North Sulawesi in Eastern Indonesia; the federal states of Sabah and Sarawak, and the federal territory of Labuan in Eastern Malaysia; and the islands of Mindanao and Palawan in the Philippines. Indonesia later expanded its participation to include all provinces in Kalimantan and Sulawesi, the Maluku island chain and Irian Jaya. EAGA covers a land area of approximately 1.54 million square kilometers and is home to about 55 million people.
3. With the exception of Brunei Darussalam, the component areas of EAGA share common characteristics of considerable geographic distance from their capital states and resource-based economies that are less developed than the capital regions. BIMP-EAGA, thus, was a shared strategy of the four participating governments in addressing the imbalance in economic development. It should be understood that the prevailing economic stability, optimistic forecasts for higher sustained economic and political growth and the growing trend towards regional economic integration in ASEAN prompted and encouraged the four governments to undertake this paradigm shift that focuses on the social and economic development of the less developed and more remote territories.
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