The Cabinet on Monday approved the draft agreement on the use of Chattogram and Mongla ports for the movement of goods to and from India.
The approval came from the weekly Cabinet meeting held with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in the chair at her office.
Cabinet Secretary Mohammad Shafiul Alam briefed reporters at the Secretariat after the 197th Cabinet meeting of the current government.
In the agreement, there is also a provision for Nepal and Bhutan to join the agreement if they wish, he said.
As per the agreement, the movement of goods will be made using four routes and Bangladeshi vehicles and vessels will have to be used inside Bangladesh for the transportation.
The routes are Chattogram port-Mongla port-Agartala via Akhaura, Chattogram port-Mongla port-Dawki via Tamabil, Chattogram port-Mongla port-Sutarkandi via Shewla, and Chattogram port-Mongla port-Bibirbazar via Simantapur and vice versa.
General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the national laws and rules of Bangladesh will be followed as well as different fees, including charge fee and fee for enhancing capacity of land ports, and transport cost will be collected. Any party can revoke the agreement with a six-month prior notice and suspend the implementation of the agreement for the sake of emergency need or national security, the Cabinet Secretary said.
The Cabinet also approved the draft of the National Curriculum and Textbook Board (NCTB) Bill, 2018 enhancing the number of the board members to nine from the existing five.
The bill was designed in Bangla bringing a few changes to the National Curriculum and Textbook Board Ordinance 1983, he said.
“In the existing law, there’s a provision of a five-member board headed by a chairman, but the number of its members has been increased to nine in the bill,” the Cabinet Secretary said, adding that the eight separate businesses were defined for eight board members in the proposed law. There is a provision for formulating separate textbooks for small ethnic minority groups in their respective mother tongues in the bill as the matter is not in the law, he said.
Besides, a provision was incorporated in the bill to formulate digital and interactive textbooks, Shafiul said.
As per the proposed law, the National Curriculum and Textbook Board (NCTB), a statutory body, will place its annual report before the government by March 31every year, he said. Besides, the Cabinet gave the final approval to the draft Bangladesh Public Administration Training Centre Bill, 2018 with minor changes to the existing law to replace the Bangladesh Public Administration Training Centre Ordinance, 1984.
“No major change was made in the bill which has also been framed in Bangla,” said Shafiul.
In the bill, the Minister and the State Minister for Public Administration were included as ex-officio members of the Board of Governance of the Bangladesh Public Administration Training Centre, he said. The Cabinet approved the drafts of the joint venture agreement, a possible company’s Memorandum of Association and Articles of Association to form a joint venture company with the joint initiatives of state-owned West Zone Power Distribution Company Limited and Hexing Electrical Co Ltd of China with a 51-49 share ratio. The name of the possible company is Bangladesh Smart Electrical Company Ltd which can produce electrical materials, including smart metres. The authorised capital of the company will be Tk 50 crore.
The Cabinet ratified a proposal to change the Charter of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) to arrange biennial conference instead of triennial conference. At the outset of the meeting, the Prime Minister unveiled the logo of the National Skills Development Authority.
The Cabinet adopted a condolence motion at the death of freedom fighter ABM Abdus Samad, who was one of the accused of the historic Agartala Conspiracy case.
