Dhaka Working to Boost Ties with Gulf Cooperation Council

Javed Patwary, Bangladesh's ambassador to Saudi Arabia, claims that Bangladesh is working to strengthen ties with the GCC and is preparing to hold ministerial-level talks with the organization.

"We have been trying to boost cooperation with GCC. In this context, we signed an MoU with the GCC in November. This MoU has a baseline on the ways to move forward," Ambassador Javed Patwary told Arab News on Saturday (5 August). 

Javed Patwary, the ambassador of Bangladesh to Saudi Arabia, met this week with Jasem Al-Budaiwi, the newly appointed head of the GCC, in order to advance the partnership. In September, the two talked about hosting a ministerial-level gathering.

"There will be a ministerial meeting which will be led by our foreign minister and the GCC secretary general. I proposed to organise the meeting during the UNGA in September at New York as a sideline meeting," Patwary said.

"Either it could take place in Dhaka or Riyadh, but there are time constraints since the UNGA will take place in September. In that case, this official-level meeting may also take place virtually. We offered all the options to GCC. Based on that, we will proceed with future works," he added.

Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates make up the GCC, an intergovernmental economic union with its main office in Riyadh. In November of last year, it formally established a framework for collaboration with Bangladesh by signing a pact.

The agreement was made between former GCC secretary general Dr. Nayem Falah Al-Hajraf and foreign minister Dr. AK Abdul Momen on the margins of the Manama Dialogue regional security summit in Bahrain.

Bangladesh has been working to create better connections with Gulf nations in order to capitalize on opportunities for collaboration centered on established fields like energy and food security. 

Bangladesh is working to strengthen its business connections, particularly with Saudi Arabia, as it pursues tighter GCC ties. Since March, when a group led by Majid bin Abdullah Al-Qasabi, the Saudi Arabian minister of commerce, visited Dhaka, opportunities have increased.

Saudi Arabia joined Bangladesh's oil, port, and agricultural industries through the signing of many investment agreements, and the two countries' chambers of commerce created a joint council to manage their bilateral economic relations.

Last month, Essa Al-Duhailan, the Saudi ambassador to Bangladesh, informed Arab News that a group of prominent businessmen from Bangladesh was scheduled to visit the Kingdom soon.

"We found some priority areas to boost cooperation, like trade, commerce, energy security, agriculture, food security, climate change, etc. Apart from that, there is another important area for boosting cooperation, which is culture. All the GCC members are moving fast with cultural developments," Ambassador Javed Patwary said.

"Increasing investment from both sides is another big area of opportunity. There can be mutual commodity exchange, and we are focusing on increasing our trade with GCC nations. We hope that cooperation in all these areas will be enhanced," he added.