Bangladesh wants to establish direct shipping website link with Maldives
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Bangladesh wants to set up a direct shipping link with Maldives as part of its move to boost trade, even while also streamlining the labour recruitment procedure in the aftermath of coronavirus pandemic.
Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen and Maldives Foreign Minister Abdulla Shahid will discuss the issues because they hold bilateral assembly at the state guesthouse Padma tomorrow.
Abdulla Shahid arrived in Dhaka on a three-day visit today in the invitation of Bangladesh's Foreign Minister Momen. He's likely to pay courtesy cell phone calls on the President and the Prime Minister of Bangladesh.
"Bangladesh and Maldives possess immense potentials of trade and investment together with placement of recruiting. Yet, the trade volume is low. We wish to augment the bilateral trade," a Bangladeshi diplomat in Maldives told this correspondent today.
The average level of exports to Maldives from Bangladesh is $6 million and imports to Bangladesh amounts to $50 million.
The products that can be exported to Maldives include high-quality readymade garments, medicine, jute and leather goods, plastic items, ceramic items at competitive prices.
"Today's transport cost is, even so, high as those will be transported via Singapore. If we've direct shipping website link from Bangladesh to Maldives, the trade could be a lot more competitive," stated the official.
Though there is absolutely no trade agreement between your two countries, right now there are opportunities for increasing trade under South Asian Free Trade Agreement. Exchange of trade and organization delegations and organising trade and organization fairs could help boost trade, said officials worried.
Maldives is home to some 90,000 Bangladeshis and several of them have grown to be undocumented. Likewise, the coronavirus pandemic possesses left a great number of them jobless, although some 15,000 of them had to come back home through the pandemic last year.
"Dhaka would demand Maldives to regularise and support them get careers," said a overseas ministry official.
About 200 Bangladeshi doctors are also employed in Maldives where they played important role during the pandemic.
A good Bangladeshi ship carried 100 a great deal of meals and medical products including 20,000 PPEs to Maldives this past year. Bangladesh Airforce aircraft carried stranded Maldivian medical pupils and households from Nepal and Bangladesh to Man. A 10-member Bangladesh MILITARY Medical Team also presented medical support for two months in Maldives.
These demonstrate the real friendship between your two countries and the potentials of trade, officials said.
They said the Maldives government is interested to recruit skilled professionals from Bangladesh, especially in the medical, engineering and education sectors. An MoU on placement of manpower to Maldives was signed in 2011, nonetheless it expired in 2016.
"In the conference, a fresh MoU is scheduled to come to be signed on February 9," an official said.
Bangladesh is able to build smaller sized ships and craft for Maldives Coast Guard, he said.
Maldivian government has long expressed interest to import river sand from Bangladesh to meet up the requirements of construction industry on Maldives. Discussions upon this may also feature in the foreign minister-level conference, he added.
"South Asia is probably the least connected areas in the world. We must improve it for considerably more trade," the state said.
Source: https://www.thedailystar.net