Asia | Bay of dreams

The Bay of Bengal should be an economic superpower

Why isn’t it?

A dock worker cycles past shipping containers at Colombo Port, Sri Lanka
Containing ambitionPhotograph: Reuters
|COLOMBO AND MATARBARI PORT

IT IS THE biggest bay on Earth—so big that five countries define the Bay of Bengal’s rim, among them India, the biggest country in the world by population, and Bangladesh, the eighth most populous. As such, the Bay of Bengal should be a natural and thriving economic space, binding South Asia and dynamic South-East Asia into one. But today it is a relative backwater. Ambitions are building to change that.

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This article appeared in the Asia section of the print edition under the headline “Bay of dreams”

From the July 20th 2024 edition

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