Badrul Ahsan :
The government is set to review the progress of execution of agreements and memorandums of understanding (MoUs) signed with Japan and China, official sources said.
Slow execution performance of the agreements signed with the two world economic power houses in Asia in recent years has prompted the government to reappraise the progress.
The Ministry of Commerce is likely to sit with all the government agencies concerned soon to asses the execution performance of the projects with a view to giving a push to the performance of the projects.
“We will sit with officials of different government departments and the Chinese and Japanese embassies to discuss the progress of implementation of the agreements and MoUs,” a high official of the ministry told The New Nation.He said the government will take some decisions at the forthcoming meeting and send those to China and Japan for quick implementation of those agreements and MoUs with the two countries.
The official noted that a significant progress has been made on the bilateral relations between China and Japan.
According to him, Bangladesh will soon open a display centre of its products in Kunming of China and also seek duty-free market access of leather hand-gloves to Japan.
At present, Bangladesh enjoys duty-free market access of some products to both the major economies-China and Japan.
Chinese president Xi Jinping visited Bangladesh last October. During his visit, the two countries signed 15 agreements and MoUs and 12 loan and mutual agreements.
Among these is a cooperation agreement on increasing investment and production-capacity building, under which 28 development projects will be infused with $21.5 billion in foreign aid.
The MoUs have been signed under China’s ‘One Belt, One Road’ flagship for maritime cooperation, joint feasibility study on a free-trade area, new ICT framework, counterterrorism collaboration, capacity building and the sharing of information, tackling climate-change risks, regional and international cooperation, and cooperation in power and energy sectors.
Japanese Prime Minister Sinzo Abe paid a visit to Bangladesh in September last year. Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina visited Japan in 2016 and 2010.
Japan, the largest bilateral development partner of Bangladesh, has significantly contributed to the socioeconomic development of the country.
The two countries have signed 21 agreements.
Japan and Bangladesh jointly launched the ‘Japan-Bangladesh Comprehensive Partnership’.
The former pledged the latter $6 billion in assistance over the next five years by way of implementing the Bay of Bengal Industrial Growth Belt (Big-B) plan.
Exchanges of notes between the two countries were signed regarding the 35th package of the Official Development Assistance (ODA), under which Bangladesh is receiving $1.18 billion from Japan for a number of major projects.
Various incentives were offered to Japanese businessmen for investing in Bangladesh, including the promise of an exclusive industrial park and special allocations in existing export- processing zones (EPZs).
On May 26 in 2014, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, and Japanese premier Sinzo Abe launched the ‘Japan-Bangladesh Comprehensive Partnership’ agreement.
Under the agreement, the two premiers reaffirmed their commitment to further strengthen the already existing warm bilateral relations ‘by elevating the friendly relationship to a new partnership’.
The prime minister of Japan also pledged to provide nearly $6 billion in additional assistance for Bangladesh in the next four to five years, starting this year.
The promised funds will come by way of implementing the concept of the Bay of Bengal Industrial Growth Belt (BIG-B) and will be used for the multipurpose tunnel under river Jamuna, the cleaning of four rivers and other projects.
Bangladesh offered 40 industrial plots in export-processing zones (EPZs) exclusively to Japanese entrepreneurs. Japan proposed around $1.2 billion worth of investment in Bangladesh.
