The fourth summit of the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) is likely to be held in Kathmandu on August 30-31.
All the seven member states have already agreed on the dates, BIMSTEC Secretary General M Shahidul Islam told the FE on Thursday.
"We have held informal consultations with all the member countries on the date proposed by Nepal. And all the countries have given consent to it," he added.
Last week, Nepal government sent the proposal to member states to organise the summit in Kathmandu on the dates.
'We are going to make official announcement regarding the dates very soon," Mr Islam said.
The summit was scheduled to be held last year but was deferred due to the general elections in Nepal, he added.
It is learnt that Bhutan was hesitant initially to agree on the dates as it would be going to polls around that time.
But recently they have agreed on the dates.
BIMSTEC is a multilateral grouping of seven countries. The countries are India, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Thailand.
In June 1997, the four Bay of Bengal littoral countries came together to form the BIST-EC (Bangladesh-India-Sri Lanka-Thailand Economic Cooperation).
In December the same year, Myanmar joined in to make it "BIMST-EC".
Nepal got the observer status in the organisation the following year.
The BIMSTEC secretary general said in the upcoming summit leaders of the member countries are expected to take some crucial decisions to revamp the seven -- member grouping.
The bloc has been dubbed a bridge between South Asian and South East Asian countries.
This intra-regional grouping held only four summits in its 20 years' history. It has been seen as a major weakness of the forum by many foreign relations experts.
