The Brunei Darussalam-Indonesia-Malaysia-Philippines East ASEAN Growth Area (BIMP-EAGA) is a sub-regional cooperation established in 1994 as a means to accelerate socioeconomic development by strengthening the economic linkages of the following sub-economies:
the entire sultanate of Brunei Darussalam;
the provinces of Kalimantan, Sulawesi, Maluku, and West Papua of Indonesia;
the states of Sabah and Sarawak and the federal territory of Labuan of Malaysia; and
the island of Mindanao and the province of Palawan in the Philippines.
The cooperation promotes public-private partnership as part of its development approach, with the private sector leading the reins towards growth, and the public sector providing a conducive environment for economic opportunities.
The Statistics and Database Working Group (SDWG), one of the working groups under the Trade and Investment Facilitation and Promotion Cluster (TIPC), was established in 2016 to address the demand for more diverse BIMP-EAGA statistics from the broader implementation of sub-regional priority programs and projects.
Being at the center of data support, the work of the SDWG is crucial in the evidence-based assessment of the overall performance of BIMP-EAGA and its cooperation sectors.