Editorial
President Gul's visit to Dhaka
It has offered a window on opportunity for greater economic links
Turkish President Abdullah Gul's two-day visit to Bangladesh has had a degree of significance that should be obvious to all. An indication of the substantive nature of the visit is to be had in the fact that the president was accompanied by a 180-member team, of which as many as 100 were businessmen and investors looking to opportunities for greater economic exchange with Bangladesh. President Gul's meeting with leading Bangladeshi businessmen yesterday and his remarks on trade relations between Dhaka and Ankara only make stronger the case for further economic cooperation between the two nations in the days ahead.
President Gul's feeling that despite Bangladesh's annual growth rate of 6 per cent there are yet a number of steps necessary to transform the country into a middle income economy is well taken. One hardly needs to be reminded that in today's fast paced world, we in Bangladesh cannot but redouble our efforts toward giving the economy the spurt it is so much in need of. And that kind of spurt, as the Turkish president has said in so many words, can result from Bangladesh's ties with other nations. Where cooperation with Turkey is concerned, the volume of trade between the two countries amounted to US$658 million in 2009. What might cheer us a little is that our exports to Turkey during that period have been a little higher than Turkey's to us. Bangladesh exported goods worth US$523 million to Turkey, while Turkey's exports amounted to US$134 million. Now, as the Turkish leader informs us, the target is to boost the two-way trade to a billion dollars in 2010.
There are quite a few other areas where we can derive advantage from our links with Turkey. As President Zillur Rahman has noted, Dhaka will welcome Ankara's assistance in its river-dredging endeavours as well as in boosting its energy production and ship-building. Other factors such as information technology, tourism and assistance in developing our agro-based industries can also come in. On our part, we can explore newer areas where increasing our exports to Turkey is concerned.
So the scope for wider economic cooperation between the two countries is there to be tapped in on. Through his visit, President Abdullah Gul has only underscored the urgency of it with our own President. It is now for us to get down to the task of working out the details of how such cooperation can be brought about, and how soon.
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