Bay of Plenty in 2011 Business & Economic Research Limited (BERL) identified the Bay of Plenty as one of the top performing regions in economic development, ranking second behind Auckland. It had the highest employment and GDP growth for 2011 and had the fastest growing medium term GDP. Tauranga, the region's largest commercial centre, was named New Zealand's top city for economic performance for the 2011 year. 67.1% of the resident population in the Bay of Plenty identified with the European ethnic group, while 27.5% of people identified themselves as Māori. This compared with 67.6% of the national population identifying themselves as ethnic
Countries dependent on the Bay of Bengal platform, which opened in 1994, was shut down in 2013. India's Reliance Industries began production in an offshore block near India's coast in 2009. The BIMSTEC countries view the Bay of Bengal as a common security space. The first conference of national security chiefs in the region was held in 2017. The Bay of Bengal has non-traditional security challenges of piracy, human trafficking, terrorist networks and drug smuggling, which has led to greater cooperation between the navies of Bangladesh, India, the United States and Thailand. The Bay of Bengal is a prime zone of strategic competition between two of Asia's