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.
