Seminar on Bangladesh's Relations with Latin American Countries
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
1 Seminar on Bangladesh’s Relations with Latin American Countries: Unlocking Potentials BIISS Auditorium, Dhaka 06 March 2016 Organised by Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA), Government of Bangladesh Bangladesh Institute of International and Strategic Studies (BIISS) Seminar on Bangladesh’s Relations with Latin American Countries: Unlocking Potentials BIISS Auditorium, Dhaka 06 March 2016 Organised by Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA), Government of Bangladesh Bangladesh Institute of International and Strategic Studies (BIISS) Published by Bangladesh Institute of International and Strategic Studies (BIISS) 1/46 Old Elephant Road, Eskaton, Dhaka-1000 Phone: +880 2 9353808, 8315808, 9336287 E-mail: [email protected] Web: www.biiss.org Printed by GraphNet Limited 95 Naya Paltan, Khan Tower 1st Floor, Dhaka-1000 Phone : 9354142, 9354133 E-mail : [email protected] Seminar on Bangladesh’s Relations with Latin American Countries: Unlocking Potentials Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Government of Bangladesh and Bangladesh Institute of International and Strategic Studies (BIISS) jointly organised a Seminar on “Bangladesh’s Relations with Latin American Countries: Unlocking Potentials”. The Seminar took place at the BIISS Auditorium on 06 March 2016. Mr. Md. Shahriar Alam, MP, Honourable State Minister, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Government of Bangladesh graced the Seminar as the Chief Guest. The main objectives of the Seminar were threefold: to explore areas of mutual benefits, cooperation, and potentials especially, economic and business potentials between Bangladesh and Latin American Countries; to strengthen and enhance people-to-people connectivity; and to explore avenues of working together on key global developmental issues. The Seminar was divided into five sessions including inaugural and four working sessions. Ambassadors of various Latin American Countries to Bangladesh e.g., Brazil, Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Colombia, Mexico, Ecuador, and Peru made presentations during the working sessions. Acting High Commissioner of Guyana and Charge d’Affairs a. i. of Trinidad and Tobago were also present during the Seminar. Scholars, business leaders, members of academia, policy makers, former and current government officials, and members of diplomatic corps as well as representatives from development partner organisations participated in the open discussion sessions. They highlighted and deliberated on various aspects of the relations between Bangladesh and Latin American countries. 1 Inaugural Session Major General A K M Abdur Rahman, ndc, psc, Director General of BIISS delivered the Introductory Remarks at the outset of the Seminar. This was followed by Inaugural Speech of Mr. Md. Shahriar Alam, MP, Honourable State Minister, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Government of Bangladesh. Ambassador Munshi Faiz Ahmad, Chairman, Board of Governors, BIISS, was the moderator of the Inaugural Session. Introductory Remarks Major General A K M Abdur Rahman, ndc, psc Director General, BIISS Major General A K M Abdur Rahman, ndc, psc in his remarks noted that Bangladesh has recently entered into the group of lower middle-income countries and it is eager to diversify its geographical engagement of economic activities. Latin America is emerging to be geo-economically and geo-strategically important. However, Bangladesh-Latin America relations remain largely unexplored. Bangladesh has only two embassies in the entire Latin American region, one in Brazil and another in Mexico. Similarly, among all Latin American countries, only Brazil has an embassy in Bangladesh. This single fact demonstrates the low level of engagement between the parties. Reason for which, Bangladesh is looking forward to strengthen her relationship with Latin American countries. He said that Bangladesh and Latin America are also looking forward to engaging more deeply on multilateral issues including migration, climate change and post-2015 development agenda and creating new platforms for enhanced people-to-people level connectivity. 2 Bangladesh’s Relations with Latin American Countries Inaugural Speech Mr. Md. Shahriar Alam, MP Honourable State Minister Ministry of Foreign Affairs Government of Bangladesh Mr. Md. Shahriar Alam, MP, Government of Bangladesh in his deliberation highlighted the extreme courageousness of our forefathers’ centuries ago, that they could overcome the geographical challenges among Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and started communicating each other. In this connection, he deeply appreciated the support of Latin American friends including the intelligence sharing during our Liberation War in 1971. The recent record indicates that Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore from 19th century became a major literary figure in South America. A significant number of his works were translated into Spanish. His works had influenced other literary figures of that age like Pablo Neruda in Chile, Octavio Paz in Mexico and others. Tagore’s friendship with Victoria Ocampo inspired his artwork to the audience of South America. Literary figures like Pablo Neruda, Garcia Márquez, V.S. Naipaul, Diego Rivera are familiar names among our generation today. Recently, the Nazrul Institute published the literary works of poet Nazrul Islam into Spanish. He mentioned that like Latinos, Bangladesh is a sport loving nation. The passion and craze of Bangladeshi football lovers for Latin American football especially for Brazil and Argentina is unique and unparallel. Pele, Maradona, Ronaldo, Messi are household names in Bangladesh. In the field of painting, internationally recognised Bangladeshi painter, Shilpacharya Zainul Abedin drew many sketches of Latin American society that are surely exemplary reflections of how deeply Bangladeshi people are associated with the people, leaders, artistes or popular symbols and images of Latin America. Added to that, economic and trade relations between Latin American countries and Bangladesh are also showing promising signs. For the past few decades, Latin American countries have been emerging steadily and strongly in international arena both politically and economically. Bangladesh has already made her footprint in Latin America by re-opening an embassy in Brazil and opening a new one in Mexico few years back. Bangladesh would like to explore new areas of cooperation in all the countries of Latin America and explore its market for pharmaceuticals, leather, ceramics, melamine goods, services, IT products and services, jute products and handicrafts, agricultural products and services including farm management and cooperatives. Bangladesh’s export of Ready Made Garments (RMG) to Latin American countries has shown a healthy growth in last few years. He hoped that the Latin American friends would find Bangladeshi market suitable for some of their exportable items as well. Bangladesh invites investments in infrastructure, energy, information and communication technology and automobiles. In today’s world, access to market is a great challenge. Bangladesh and Latin America can work together for easy market access, for addressing tariff structure and non-tariff barriers as well as achieving preferential trade agreement. Honourable State Minister noted that Bangladesh is at a juncture of transforming itself into a middle-income country. The per capita income stands at US$ 1316. The economic growth is six and half per cent for last 7 to 8 years. It certainly demonstrates the resilience and dynamism of Bangladeshi people, healthy and stable macro- economic growth and the environment conducive to growing trade and economy. It is therefore, high time for 3 the country to go beyond the traditional export market and look for new regions and countries with which it can establish new political and economic relations and reinvigorate the existing relations based on mutual benefits. Certainly one of the prospective regions is Latin America. He mentioned that not only on matters of bilateral interests and benefits, Bangladesh and the countries of Latin America must seize the opportunities of cooperation and collaboration on issues of contemporary global development such as addressing climate change, attaining the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), advancing global migration and mobility, and augmenting South-South cooperation. In Climate Change discourse, Bangladesh and many Latin American countries are members of Climate Vulnerable Forum (CVF), through which they are advocating for resolute and urgent actions on key climate change issues. In the area of migration and mobility, Bangladesh as the current Chair of the Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD), will host the Ninth GFMD Summit in Dhaka in December 2016, and we look forward to welcoming wider participation from Latin American civil society and governments. Honourable State Minister highlighted, geographically, Latin America may be a far away continent, but it is close to Bangladesh’s heart. Latin American countries and Bangladesh have commonalities in aspiration, goals and values. They have similar understanding on common global, social, political and economic issues. Bangladesh views Latin America not just as a market for its export, but a valued partner with whom it can share its culture. He noted that greater people-to-people contact will eventually lead to greater business and economic opportunities 4 Bangladesh’s Relations with Latin American Countries Remarks by the Moderator Ambassador Munshi Faiz Ahmed Chairman, Board of Governors, BIISS. Ambassador Munshi Faiz Ahmed, Chair of