Delhi to implement soon joint statement decisions
With a view to operationalising the decisions incorporated in the joint statement issued after Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's visit to New Delhi, India took up at the highest level the issue of expeditious implementation of the decisions.
Indian Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee at a meeting here on Thursday evening with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, has discussed speeding up the process of implementing the joint statement decisions after Sheikh Hasina's India visit in January.
It was necessary to further bolster the ties between India and Bangladesh, which have been on the upswing ever since the Sheikh Hasina government assumed power more than a year ago, sources said yesterday.
During the meeting, Mukherjee briefed Prime Minister Singh about his discussions with Sheikh Hasina and other Bangladesh leaders during the whirlwind visit to Dhaka on August 7 to oversee the signing of the MoU for India's one billion dollar line of credit to Bangladesh, they said.
Mukherjee and Singh also discussed broad contours of the current state of India-Bangladesh relations and the major issues of bilateral interest.
The meeting felt that implementation of the joint statement signed after Sheikh Hasina's visit to Delhi from January 11-13 was necessary to keep up the momentum in the bilateral relations.
Among the issues that were understood to have figured at the Singh-Mukherjee meeting were river water-sharing, trade and exchange of enclaves and border demarcation.
Senior officials of the two countries are likely to meet next month on the issue of exchange of adverse possession of enclaves of India and Bangladesh as per the Indira-Mujib pact of 1974.
Bangladesh has repeatedly stressed the need for implementing the decisions taken during Sheikh Hasina's visit, particularly relating to trade, water-sharing and exchange of enclaves. Mukherjee conveyed Dhaka's concerns during his August 7 visit.
India is reportedly considering including 45 to 50 more goods in the list for duty-free import from Bangladesh in a bid to help reduce the huge gap in bilateral trade. While India's exports to Bangladesh are estimated at over three billion dollars, import from that country is 345 million dollars.
The two leaders also discussed the Bangladesh-India relations during the course of their meeting.
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