Home ›› 08 Apr 2022 ›› Opinion
The recently concluded visit of the Saudi Foreign Minister, Prince Faisal Bin Farhan Al Saud, along with his entourage, to Bangladesh, provided a fillip to the prevailing fraternal relations between Bangladesh and Saudi Arabia. Amid the growing geopolitical irritants of the Russia-Ukraine crisis, the first-ever ‘high-level political dialogue’ between Dhaka and Riyadh manifests the revitalization of the existing political coalition and demonstrates a ‘symbolic gesture’ to Saudi Arabia’s “reprioritization of Asia” in its foreign policy. Such a political climate makes the likelihood of building a relationship towards a “comprehensive partnership with a targeted roadmap”. Bangladeshi Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen proposed to tap the untapped potential and create a “win-win situation” during the meeting.
A snapshot of the visit
The Prince’s visit followed the invitation of Bangladesh’s Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen. While he paid a courtesy call visit to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina at Ganabhaban, Prince Faisal hailed the tremendous economic expansion of Bangladesh. He expressed Riyadh’s willingness to explore new contours of economic cooperation. Meanwhile, the Bangladesh prime minister has sought larger investment from Saudi Arabia, particularly in the special economic zones of Bangladesh.
“Bangladesh is ready to extend support to (Saudi Arabia’s) investors, including allocating dedicated land for them in the special economic zones,” she said.
The main agendas of the consultation meeting were trade and investment, skilled labour recruitment, hajj management, health, education, climate change, ICT, and tourism. Turning to trade and investment, the Saudi Arabia diplomat emphasized the need to enhance collaboration and proposed launching a joint business forum and exchanging business delegations between the two countries. In addition, he expressed Saudi investors’ desire to invest “extensively” in Bangladesh and requested policy and institutional support in investment from Bangladesh.
During the meeting, Momen also pointed out six potential areas for future engagement, particularly collaboration and partnership with Saudi Green Initiative, investment in Bangladesh Exclusive Economic Zone in Chattogram, investment in the IT sector and hotel and tourism industry, food security programme by contract farming in third countries and skills training programme in Bangladesh at Saudi initiative. At the end of the consultation, two instruments - an agreement on cooperation and mutual assistance in customs matters and an MoU on cooperation between the foreign service academies of the two countries were signed by the leaders.
Being one of the pillars of Islam, the Hajj – the pilgrimage to Mecca – has got special dignity and immense socio-economic and cultural impacts on Bengali Muslims. Every year thousands of Bangladeshi pilgrims visit Saudi Arabia to perform Hajj. As a symbol of Fraternity, the Saudi government granted 100% immigration clearance from Bangladesh, which previously had to be done in KSA. Thus, the harassment of Bengali Hajis in a foreign land will be significantly reduced. Bangladesh also expressed its eagerness to join Saudi’s “Green initiative”, the largest reforestation program in the world, aiming to plant a total of 50 billion trees inside and across the neighboring Middle East countries, by providing saplings as well as assistance for maintenance, to combat the effects of climate change.
The growing reciprocity
Demonstrating the miraculous economic growth over the past decades, Bangladesh transformed from a “bottomless basket” into a “South Asian miracle”. It plans to graduate from the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) category to a developing one by 2026. To avoid the ‘middle-income trap’ and escape from the ‘Dutch Disease’ Bangladesh needs more investment to diversify its economic engagements. These aspirations justify participation in rapidly expanding trade and economic collaboration with key partners such as Saudi Arabia. The evidence of growing reciprocity is also reflected in the recent press conference of Saudi Ambassador to Bangladesh, Essa Yussef Essa Al Dulaihan, that Saudi Arabian Investment Minister Khalid al-Falih will lead a delegation of 22 companies to explore investment opportunities in Bangladesh after the Ramadan.
Additionally, the trade between the countries is in a crescendo over the years, which stood at 1.3 billion dollars in 2021. Beyond economic and cultural exchange, security cooperation between the countries is depicted in recent years. In conformity with the government’s “zero tolerance” policy against terrorism and violent extremism, Bangladesh has joined the Saudi-led military alliance IMCTC, a pan-Islamic unified front of 41 countries. Expressing satisfaction at the close alignment of positions in all major global issues, both leaders affirmed to continue this collaboration ahead.
The jewel in the crown of Dhaka-Riyadh relations is the 2.3 million vibrant Bangladeshi diaspora community who are incessantly contributing to Saudi’s “Vision-2030” as well as many development pathways, while simultaneously shouldering the economic pillar of Bangladesh by providing economy-boosting remittance. Even during the pandemic, Saudi employed around 1.61 lakh Bangladeshi workers, rather than resuming the labour market as others did, in 2020. As Bangladesh is currently enjoying the era of demographic dividend, Bangladesh needs to export more skilled and unskilled labourers to KSA from its vibrant labour market driven by its youth. According to the data of BMET, in January, a total of 105322 Bangladeshi workers to overseas countries. Of them, 71,172 workers were sent to Saudi Arabia, 65 per cent of total overseas employment. The outflow of workers would gather steam in the coming years as Saudi Arabia is in constant need of workers due to many mega infrastructure development projects is underway. Both the states are now working on addressing the challenges including the “middlemen” or “sub-agents” trap.
Since the inception of the Rohingya influx, Saudi Arabia continuously keep supporting Bangladesh, from the political and humanitarian ground, in the form of aid, assistance and remained vocal in global and regional forums. In continuation to that approach, Saudi Arabia has promised financial support to the genocide case in the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
The war in Ukraine has come to the world in a wholly unanticipated form—in the context of intensity, barbarism, and global response—much in a similar posture of Covid-19. However, the effects of this war are much awful and devastating for the lower and middle-income countries that are likely to suffer mostly and abruptly, as typically expected, for the upshot of food and energy price hike — along with supply shortages— which pushes up the inflation and food insecurity. In these circumstances, to dodge the socio-financial turbulence and to maintain stability in the oil market, the KSA gave the commitment to provide an uninterrupted supply of oil to Bangladesh.
The current geopolitical metamorphism of world context has made the KSA, an ally of America, yield a distinct diplomatic approach as well as to reset its priorities, putting the intra Middle-Eastern skirmishes and Superpower dizziness behind. Saudi Arabia may account for the rise of the world’s fastest-growing region Asia for strategic rebalancing. In this context, Bangladesh could be fitted to Saudi’s new foreign policy context of hedging as in the growing geopolitical prominence of the Indo-Pacific, Bangladesh has become crucial both in strategic as well as geopolitical calculations.
The writer is an independent researcher.
