Private sector representatives have said Bangladesh can gain much by joining the Maritime Silk Route, a Chinese strategic initiative floated in 2013 to increase investments and foster collaboration across the historic trade route.
“I understand that Bangladesh has agreed in principle [to the initiative], and it is very, very important for a business and economic point of view,” the president of Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Syed Nasim Manzur, told a seminar in the capital yesterday.
Earlier last June, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina discussed the issue with the top Chinese leadership during a visit to China; later in November, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced plans to create a $40bn fund to develop the New Silk Road and the Maritime Silk Route.
Bangladesh Institute of International and Strategic Studies (BIISS) organised yesterday's seminar, titled “Marine Resources Management of Bangladesh in the Context of Newly Demarcated Boundary,” and BIISS Chairman Ambassador Munshi Faiz Ahmed presided.
Addressing the seminar, business leader Nasim Manzur also said job creation, product diversification, food security, and land scarcity were the areas under the blue economy – a sustainable maritime economic system – where the private sector could contribute.
Urging the government to invest in knowledge building, Manzur added: “As a businessman, I think we have a great opportunity.”
In his keynote presentation, Maritime Affairs Unit Secretary Md Khurshed Alam described how Bangladesh had prepared itself to present its cases before the international courts.
Bangladesh now has sovereign rights over a 118,000 square-kilometre area in the Bay of Bengal after settling a maritime boundary dispute with Myanmar in the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) in 2012, as well as settling a separate dispute with India at the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in 2014.
Khurshed, who acted as deputy agent for both cases, said Bangladesh had invited the PCA judges to visit the Bay of Bengal to see for themselves the boundary line claimed by the parties.
The judges’ visits to the disputed places immensely helped Bangladesh to make them understand Dhaka’s claim over the boundary, Khurshed said.
Regarding the business prospects of the blue economy, he said shipping, fisheries, tourism, aquaculture, energy, and mineral resources were the areas in which the private sector could invest.
Senior government officials, former ambassadors, and diplomats of different countries attended the seminar at the BIISS.