In the Seventh Joint Consultative Commission (JCC) meeting, Bangladesh and India have agreed to work together to offset the negative impacts of the Ukraine war on the regional economy, said Foreign Minister Dr AK Abdul Momen on Monday.
“Already one of our neighbouring countries is facing catastrophe due to the war between other countries- we do not want that any other country of the region to face similar problems”, said Dr Momen while briefing journalists on his arrival from Delhi at the Hajrat Shajalal International Airport.
Responding to a question the minister said that the JCC failed to fix a date for the Joint River Commission (JRC) meeting, which has been sought for a long time by Bangladesh.
They have been telling us for long that they will give a date but no date is given. We hope that they will give a date for the JRC before the visit of our Prime Minister.
Terming the JCC very fruitful, the minister said that the JCC had proposed the first week of September for Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s visit to New Delhi.
The visit will take place at that time if the PMO okays it, the minister said.
In the JCC, Bangladesh urged India to lift anti-dumping restrictions on its exports to India, especially on products like Jute and floating glass.
The Indian side argued that the restriction was imposed as the Bangladesh government gave subsidies for the exports of those products, but we told them this is not a subsidy, this is an export incentive, the foreign minister said.
“They said they will discuss the issue with concerned ministries”.
India alleged that Indian trucks faced severe delays while loading and unloading goods at Bangladesh’s land ports.
To address the issue, the meeting decided to hold joint visits by the representatives of customs departments of both the countries, Momen informed.
The minister said that when Bangladesh raised the border killing issue, India informed the meeting that recently border-killing came to zero and gave assurance of minimising such events.
The minister said that the JCC discussed extensively joint cooperation to prevent casualties of floods through sharing data and through the early warning system.
He said that Bangladesh proposed to open up all river routes of both countries to each other but India is yet to give any decision in this regard.
