Shawdesh Desk:

The second bilateral consultation between Ministries of Foreign Affairs of Bangladesh and the Sultanate of Oman was held  Thursday (March 24) at the State Guest House, Padma, Dhaka.

Masud Bin Momen, Foreign Secretary led Bangladesh delegation while Sheikh Khalifa Alharthy- Undersecretary for Diplomatic Affairs, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Oman led Omani delegation at the meeting.

The consultation was followed by inking a mutual visa waiver agreement for diplomatic/ official, special and service passport holders.

The meeting reviewed the whole gamut of bilateral cooperation between Bangladesh and Oman and exchanged views on issues of mutual interests in regional and international arena.

The discussions covered stock-taking of existing cooperation in the field of manpower, bilateral trade and investment, agriculture, energy security and exchange of visit between trade bodies.

During the meeting, the leaders exchanged views on the means and ways of consolidating and expanding the bilateral ties to new areas of cooperation from the single manpower-dominated focus.

The new areas that came up for discussion included contract farming and food security, environment and climate change, ICT and ITES, blue economy, ship-building industry etc.

During the consultations, Bangladesh side briefed the Omani delegation about the investment friendly climate and urged them to consider investing in Bangladesh in the area of ICT, Hi-Tech Parks, Ship-building, tourism etc. with offer to allocation of land in the Exclusive Economic Zone. The Omani side took note of the offer and informed that an investment team from Oman would undertake a visit to Bangladesh to see the opportunities of investment in Bangladesh.

Both sides discussed threadbare various aspects of the bilateral trade and underlined the need to devise means and ways to enhance the bilateral trade and investment between the two countries.

The meeting took note of the need for establishing direct shipping links between the two countries’ ports, increasing engagement of private sectors and business community and agreed Business 2 Business interaction and exchange of visits among business community between the two countries.

Both sides also agreed to form a Bangladesh- Oman Business Forum to augment bilateral trade and business between the two countries.

Recogniing the convergence of interests with regard to aspiration for development, both sides agreed to identify and collaborate potential areas of cooperation in the implantation of Bangladesh vision 2041 and Omani Vision 2040.

The delegation leaders also expressed keenness to scale up the bilateral ties from the existing phase of ‘friendship and cooperation’ to the level of ‘comprehensive partnership’ and agreed to formulate a time-bound and target-based road-map to achieve the goals of the partnership.

Both the leaders expressed satisfaction at the close alignment of positions in all major global issues regarding stability, security, regulations, primacy of state sovereignty and upholding the UN Charter and hoped to continue the coordination of our positions/ roles in the multilateral organizations.

They also took note of supporting each other’s candidature to the UN system.

The Omani Undersecretary paid a courtesy call on with the Foreign Minister after the Consultations where they discussed issues of mutual interests.

It may be noted that this is 2nd bilateral consultations held in Dhaka under the aegis of the MoU on Foreign Office Consultations signed between Bangladesh and Oman in 2015.