The Prime Minister’s Office has asked the ministries concerned to expedite the process of implementation of the decisions made at the Bangladesh-India summit in January.Sources close to the PMO said a high-level meeting on Wednesday directed the secretaries of the relevant ministries to take necessary steps and also prepare progress reports on implementation of the decisions before the prime minister sits with them soon.(The New Age BD)Improving road connectivity with India, allowing water transit through Ashuganj port, power trade, receiving loans pledged by New Delhi and duty-free access of Bangladeshi commodities to Indian market are the key areas covered by the joint communiqué issued by Bangladesh prime minister Sheikh Hasina and her Indian counterpart Manmohan Singh.Wednesday’s meeting presided over by the prime minister’s economic affairs adviser Mashiur Rahman, asked the bureaucrats to undertake maximum efforts to implement the decisions and sit with each other to work out ways to remove hurdles.A tripartite or even four-party meeting involving Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Bhutan may be organised to make arrangement for direct transport services, recommended the meeting asking the communications ministry to work on it.‘Such a meeting can pave the way for understanding and working out a modality for introduction of something like direct bus services. Bangladesh or Bhutan can convince India to agree to transit for the land-locked Himalayan state,’ said an official. The official said that the economic relations division had been asked to contact the Indian side about how Bangladesh could receive a $100 million loan pledged by the Indian government.The shipping ministry has been asked to prepare its report on use of Ashuganj port for transport of Indian goods as per the communiqué.Currently, a joint team is assessing the state of infrastructures on the spot for transport of ‘over dimensional cargo’ from Ashuganj to Agartala before making an estimate of costs.The meeting could not give any directives on the much-talked about duty-free access of 47 Bangladeshi items to Indian market.However, denying having any such list, a source in the commerce ministry said Dhaka would now focus on reduction in the number of Bangladeshi items in India’s negative list for getting market access at zero duty.Among others, secretaries of the ministries of foreign affairs, communications, industries, shipping, cultural affairs and home affairs and also the economic relations division were present at the meeting held at the Prime Minister’s Office.
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