Foreign Minister Dipu Moni left Dhaka last night for a week-long official visit to Saudi Arabia and Nigeria.
Official sources said she will inaugurate Machine Readable Passport (MRP) activities in Riyadh and Jeddah in Saudi Arabia for the Bangladeshis working there.
During her three-day stay (July 11-13) in Saudi Arabia, she will also perform Umrah. She is expected to meet her Saudi counterpart and other government high-ups.
Around 20 lakh Bangladeshi workers in Saudi Arabia, official sources.
From Saudi Arabia, she will leave for Abuja, Nigeria to attend the 14th Session of the Developing-8 Council of Ministers on July 14.
Official sources said the D-8 will further encourage member countries to ratify a preferential trade agreement (PTA) this year to boost intra-group trade.
According to D-8 figure, the proposed trade deal would support the target of reaching a total trade volume of 2.8 trillion US dollar by 2020. The total foreign trade of D-8 members reached 1.15 trillion US dollar in 2009, while D-8 intra-group trade volume was only 67 billion US dollar, says the latest data.
Meantime, D-8 members Iran, Malaysia, Nigeria and Turkey had ratified the PTA while Indonesia was in the process of ratifying it. The population of D-8 is about 1.1 billion.
Source : The Daily Star
No comments:
Post a Comment