During the Second BIMSTEC Ministerial meeting held in Dhaka, Bangladesh, on 19 November 1998, six priority sectors had been identified for BIMSTEC Cooperation:
(i) Trade and Investment (ii) Transport and Communication (iii) Energy (iv) Technology (v) Tourism, and (vi) Fisheries
During the Eighth Ministerial Meeting held in Dhaka, Bangladesh on 18-19 December 2005, it had been decided to include seven more sectors identified by the First BIMSTEC Summit (Bangkok, Thailand, 31 July 2004), to the list of priority sectors of cooperation, expanding the total sectors of cooperation to thirteen:
(vii) Poverty Alleviation (viii) Agriculture (ix) Cultural Cooperation (x) Counter-Terrorism and Transnational Crimes (xi) Environment and Disaster Management (xii) Public Health (xiii) People-to-People Contracts
