• Indian Ocean Rim Association’s (IORA) Council of Ministers (COM) was held in Colombo recently.
• It was attended by foreign ministers and senior officials of the 23-nation grouping of countries.
• Banner theme- ‘Strengthening Regional Architecture: Reinforcing Indian Ocean Identity’
• Sri Lanka took charge as Chair this year from Bangladesh, and India is Vice-Chair, meaning that the troika of IORA is within the South Asian region.
• ‘Colombo Communique and ‘IORA Vision 2030 and Beyond’ was

 ABOUT IORA

• While the IORA was formed in 1997 (then called the Indian Ocean Region-Association for Regional Cooperation) in Mauritius, its genesis came from a speech Nelson Mandela gave in Delhi in 1995.
• The Indian Ocean Rim Association includes 23 countries from Africa, West Asia, South Asia, South East Asia, Australia and littoral states situated in and around the Indian Ocean.
• The grouping, whose apex body is the Council of Foreign Ministers that meet once a year, moves by rotation through members every two years.
• IORA’s membership includes 23 countries: Australia, Bangladesh, the Comoros, France, India, Indonesia, Iran, Kenya, Madagascar, Malaysia, the Maldives, Mauritius, Mozambique, Oman, Seychelles, Singapore, Somalia, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Thailand, the UAE and Yemen.
• It also has 11 dialogue partners.
• IORA’s seven priority areas are maritime safety and security; trade and investment facilitation; fisheries management; disaster risk management; academic, science and technology; tourism and cultural exchanges; and gender empowerment.
• Importance- A third of the world’s population (2.6 billion people) live in the region, and 80% of global oil trade, 50% of the world’s containerised cargo and 33% of its bulk cargo passes through it.
  • The region produces a combined total of $1 trillion in goods and services and intra-IORA trade is billed at around $800 billion.