Broad-based Bangladesh-Japan forum soon

Munima Sultana | Published: July 27, 2014 00:00:00 | Updated: November 30, 2024 06:01:00

Bangladesh and Japan are going to form a broad-based joint forum comprising members of both public and private sectors to work on investment and trade opportunities in an enabling environment to mutual benefit of the two countries.
Officials said the Ministry of Commerce has already starting preparing position paper, with the support of Japan, to identify areas of dialogue for the first meeting.
Â "Bangladesh-Japan government and non-government forum will be first-ever forum where participation of both public and private groups of the two countries has been ensured to work on creating pro-investment and-trade environment for both the countries," said a senior official of the commerce ministry.
He said a notification had already been issued in this regard and they proceeded to hold the first meeting of the forum on August 21-in what comes as a fast follow-up to the Bangladesh prime minister's Tokyo tour.
Sources said a Japanese delegation would come soon to work on the position paper to fix up the agenda for the maiden meet.
The Bangladesh-Japan government and non-government forum is being formed as a follow-up to the joint statement signed between the prime ministers of Bangladesh and Japan during the visit of the former to the economic power last May.
Sources said as the visit uplifted the Japan-Bangladesh bilateral relationship onto comprehensive partnership, the forum would play a positive role in taking forward the partnership through dialogues for the socioeconomic development of the two countries.
They hope Dhaka's demands like removing tariff barriers, quota-and-duty- free trade would get importance while scope of removing various investment barriers that Japan identified in Bangladesh are likely to be dealt with in this kind of forum meeting.
Earlier on various occasions, Japanese business community submitted to the government a list of common areas where improvement is needed in business to ease doing business in Bangladesh. But, sources said, hardly any step was taken.
Japan considers Bangladesh as an important China plus-1 country due to low cost of labour and its geopolitical location. That might create opportunity of business and industrial shifting to Bangladesh. But Tokyo wants some pro- business environment to secure their investment.