India and Bangladesh have recently signed an agreement on their proposed 130km oil pipeline, which is aimed at pumping Indian oil to Bangladesh, which has a capacity of 1 million tonnes per annum.
The deal was part of the six memorandum of understandings, which New Delhi and Dhaka have signed during a meeting with the country’s foreign secretaries.
Vijay Keshav Gokhale, India’s foreign secretary, held a talk with the senior Bangladeshi officials, to discuss the bilateral and regional issues.
“Today, we add another six documents to our large and growing list of meaningful agreements signed during the recent visits of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Bangladesh and Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to India,” Gokhale said.
The documents included the implementation MoU on the friendship pipeline that is situated between Numaligarh in Assam and Parbatipur in Bangladesh.
Both countries signed two more MoUs, in order to set up language labs in 500 schools around Bangladesh and to upgrade roads in Rangpur city.
Gokhale stated that, “This is part of our endeavour to undertake projects in Bangladesh in various socio-economic sectors including education, culture, health, community welfare, road infrastructure for which we are providing Tk 1,600 crore.”
He claimed that India remained a ‘committed development partner’ of Bangladesh and had said that India had extended lines of credit over $8 billion to Bangladesh during the last seven years.
He added that: “This is the largest amount of credit India has ever committed to any single country, he said.”
During 2008 and 2009. The bilateral trade was $2.75 billion, and in 2016-2017 the amount tripled to $7.52 billion.
While discussing the power and energy sector, Gokhale said that India had been supplying 660 MW of power to Bangladesh and India would be adding 500 MW more by June.
He announced the second phase of the Humanitarian assistance, for the refugees in Rohingya. Shahdiul Haque, Bangladeshi counterpart said that he was happy with India’s decision to help the Rohingya refugees and on the pending Teesta water sharing deal.
Gokhale had even called Bangladesh “India’s biggest trade partner in South Asia”.
