Coastal shipping team to meet in India in March

A joint taskforce on coastal shipping between India and Bangladesh will meet in New Delhi in the first week of March to increase cooperation in the sector, M Shahidul Haque, foreign secretary of Bangladesh, said yesterday.

The visiting official made the remark after talks with his Indian counterpart S Jaishankar and meetings with India's National Security Advisor Ajit Doval and Special Secretary in Water Resources Ministry Amarjit Singh.

Coastal shipping is a new area identified by the two countries during Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Dhaka in June last year, Haque told reporters, adding that the forthcoming meeting of the taskforce would take forward bilateral cooperation.

The taskforce will identify the Indian and Bangladeshi ports and sea routes which are to be opened for coastal shipping for goods and passenger services, he said.

The two countries signed a deal on coastal shipping comprising movement of cargo and cruise liner services late last year.

Haque said there "has been very good progress" in securing Indian assistance for development of Chittagong port.  

The two sides had "very fruitful discussions," he said, on various aspects of bilateral relations including terrorism, water resources management, trade, investment, power and energy, regional cooperation, connectivity, regional and multilateral cooperation and people-to-people contact.  

"We went through the progress in implementation of the decisions taken during Prime Minister Modi's visit and the progress has been very fast," Haque said.    

Replying to a question on Teesta water-sharing deal, he said, “The Indian side has been very open to discussions on joint water resources management."

Both sides are working on a meeting of the ministerial-level joint river commission, he said. The previous meeting of JRC was held more than five years ago.

Asked if there has been any progress in efforts toward the Teesta water-sharing deal, Haque merely said: "Let us wait and see."

Haque said the issues of Bangla-deshi-Bhutan-India-Nepal Corridor and Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar connectivity came up in the bilateral meeting and both sides expressed satisfaction over the progress on the two fronts.

The third meeting on the BCIM project is expected to be held this year in India, he added.