Malaysian High Commis-sioner in Dhaka Norlin Oth-man has said Bangladesh and Malaysia can comple-ment each other on trade front and produce products together to sell those in the global market meeting do-mestic demands. We can complement each other. We don’t have to compete. Bangladesh has something and Malaysia has something. You (business-people) join hands together and produce products that can be sold in the rest of the world,” she said. The Malaysian diplomat was speaking as the thief guest at an award-giving cer¬emony arranged by the Bangladesh-Malaysia Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BMCCI) to distrib¬ute ‘BMCCI Excellence Awards-2013’ among the winners at a city hotel on Monday night. BMCCI President Nasir A Chowdlnuy, Secretary Gen-eral Raquib Mohammad Falchrul, Managing Director and CEO of Robi .kdata Ltd Supon Weerasinghe and for¬mer BMCCI President and Chairman of the BMCCI Ex-cellence Awards 2cu3 organ-ising committee Syed Nurul Islam, among others, ad¬dressed the function. Norlin Othman said she is trying hard to bring in Malaysian businessmen here in Bangladesh to set up their factories and produce products here which also boost employment. Explaining the advantage of producing products here, she said there is a vast mar¬ket here and in Malaysia, and the products can be ex¬ported to the rest of the world with duty-free export advantage. “In European Union (EU), you (BD) have duty-free-quota-free (DFQF) market access. Malaysia doesn’t get this DFQF treatment from the EU.” The diplomat said unfor-tunately the Malaysian High Commission here does not have a proper trade office as her governments idea is that Bangladesh can be covered from India. “Trade office in Chennai actually covers Bangladesh. We’re working on that. We’re trying to persuade the government to put one spe- cific trade officer here in Bangladesh because Bangladesh is doing very well,” she added. The diplomat said Bangladesh has great poten¬tials and she realised that lot of things could be done to¬gether and showed interest to import potato and hilsa from Bangladesh. Appreciating the BMCCrs role in promoting trade and investment, she advised the businesspeople to get in touch with the chamber for finding guidelines to do business. We want Bangladesh businessmen to come to Malaysia. You’ll have no problems in getting visa and those who want to be part¬ners with Malaysian busi¬nessmen will have three years visa with multiple en¬try,” she added. She also suggested the ex-porters to diversify their products what they are cur-rently selling to Malaysia to boost bilateral trade. Supon Weerasinghe con-gratulated the awardees and said, ‘We believe in business excellence and hope to see the continuation of success as consistency is part of ex-cellence.” Syed Nurul briefly intro- duced the three award win-ners and said the awards could not be distributed timely due to political tur¬moil. He said the BMCCI will continue to work to promote Bangladesh-Malaysia trade and investment “Wye the agenda to promote Bangladesh in Malaysia and Malaysia in Bangladesh.” The award winners are Salahuddin Kasem Khan, Managing Director of AK Khan & Co Ltd for Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), Abdul Matlub Ahmad, Chairman of Nitol-Niloy Group for export and import and Nasir A Choudhury, Ad-viser of Green Delta Insur¬ance Co Ltd for his role in flourishing insurance busi¬ness in the country. The award distibution was followed by a cultural function performed by Bad-shah Bulbul and Dinat Ja¬han Munni. Former presidents of BM-CCI, top management of various financial institu¬tions, and dignitaries from government and private sec-tors were present.
