by Rejaul Karim Byron in The Daily Star, Oct 15, 2017
The deal signed between Beijing and Dhaka for setting up a dedicated economic zone in Chittagong during Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Bangladesh last year is yet to see any progress.
Some 26 deals were signed during Xi’s visit to Dhaka in October last year with a view to boosting trade and investment between the two countries. Of the deals, there has been movement on only one-fourth of them.
The joint venture agreement for Chinese economic and industrial zone is one of the 13 deals that saw hardly any progress in the last one year.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina had promised a dedicated economic zone for Chinese investors during her visit to China in 2014. Accordingly, 790 acres of land was acquired at Anwara in Chittagong.
Then in June last year, a preliminary agreement was signed between the Bangladesh Economic Zones Authority (Beza) and the China Harbour Engineering Company.
And during the Chinese president’s visit, agreed terms were signed for development and operation of the zone.
The next step was to form a special purpose company between Beza and China Harbour, which is yet to be done one year on.
Bangladesh had sought soft loan of $280 million for the development of the zone; the procedure to sign a loan agreement is expected to be finalised next month, according to Paban Chowdhury, executive chairman of Beza.
However, the soft loan is not part of the agreements that would be signed this fiscal year, according to finance ministry officials.
Another Beza official said, as the loan deal was not signed, China Harbour is not much interested in forming the special purpose company.
To get the zone ready, much work will have to be done on building offsite infrastructure, which will start once the soft loan comes through, Chowdhury said.
As of now the tow access road for entering the zone has been built, while the site office development work will be complete by December.
Another deal that saw hardly any progress is the one on jointly promoting the Belt and Road Initiative of China.
A high level meeting was held in Beijing in May for increasing cooperation for implementing the Belt and Road Initiative. Industries Minister Amir Hossain Amu and State Minister for Finance and Planning MA Mannan participated in the meeting.
Mannan said he is not aware whether any step has been taken in this regard after the meeting in May.
No bilateral step has been taken for implementing the concept, according to officials of foreign and finance ministries.
The stalemate created over the Rohingya issue may hamper the One Belt One Road initiative: to join the initiative Bangladesh would have to go through Myanmar.
Another agreement was signed between the National Development and Reform Commission of China and the industries ministry of Bangladesh for cooperation on production capacity.
A high official of the industries ministry said a steering committee will be formed in this regard.
Bangladesh has forwarded the list of names to represent the country in the steering committee three months ago, but there has been no response from China yet on this front.
“But they are not sitting idle,” the industries ministry official said.
The industries ministry has already communicated the matter to various ministries about what type of cooperation they need. On the basis of this, the matter will be discussed in the steering committee, he added.
Meanwhile, the commerce ministry signed a preliminary agreement for a joint feasibility study on China-Bangladesh free trade agreement. The feasibility study is scheduled to be complete by December next year.
The names of the Bangladesh delegation on a joint committee for the feasibility study were sent to China several months earlier, said a commerce ministry official.
And last month China sent the names of their representatives. The Chinese side said the first meeting is likely to be held in Beijing next month.
Two other preliminary agreements were signed on disaster prevention and special assistance projects of bridge construction.
The disaster management and relief ministry has already received Tk 100 crore of fire-fighting equipment from China as grant.
China will provide grant for construction of three bridges; loan agreement has been signed for one and the feasibility study is going on for the other two.
The finance minister of Bangladesh and the commerce minister of China signed an agreement on increasing economic and technical cooperation between the two countries under which about $83 million grant will be given.
A finance ministry official said there has been no progress yet in this regard.
Another two preliminary agreements were signed between the foreign ministries of the two countries: one of them for the establishment of a mechanism of dialogue on maritime cooperation and another on strengthening cooperation in bilateral, regional and international affairs.
Two more were inked on information and communication technology and no progress has been made since, according to officials of the concerned ministry.
Of the 26 deals signed during the visit of the Chinese president, 11 were for seven projects; of which two are at the implementation stage.
Another preliminary agreement was signed for strengthening investment and production capacity cooperation, under which China promised to give soft loan of $21.5 billion for 27 projects.http://www.thedailystar.net/business/three-fourth-deals-china-show-no-progress-1476493
Comments are closed.