Bangladesh and Oman on Thursday signed a mutual visa waiver agreement for diplomatic, official, special and service passport holders.
The deal was signed after the second bilateral consultation between the ministries of Bangladesh and Oman held at the state guest house, Padma, in Dhaka.
Bangladesh Foreign Secretary Masud Bin Momen and Oman Undersecretary for Diplomatic Affairs Sheikh Khalifa Alharthy led their respective sides at the meeting, a foreign ministry press release said.
During the meeting, the delegation leaders 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.
The discussions covered stock-taking of existing cooperation in the field of manpower, bilateral trade and investment, agriculture, energy security and exchange of visits between trade bodies.
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 and ship-building industry.
During the consultations, the Bangladeshi side briefed the Omani delegation about the investment friendly climate of the country and urged them to consider investing here in the area of ICT, hi-tech parks, shipbuilding and tourism with an offer to allocate land in the exclusive economic zone.
The Omani side took note of the offer and informed that an investment team from their country would visit Bangladesh to see the opportunities of investment.
Both the sides also agreed to form a Bangladesh-Oman Business Forum to augment bilateral trade and business 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 to business” interaction and exchange of visits.
Recognising 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.
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 organisations.
They also took note of supporting each other’s candidature to the UN system.
The Omani undersecretary paid a courtesy call on with Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen after the consultations where they discussed issues of mutual interests.
