IMC and Chittagong Chamber Sign MoU for Cooperation
Indian Merchants’ Chamber (IMC) has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Chittagong Chamber of Commerce & Industry (CCCI) of Bangladesh for cooperation between the two Chambers aimed at promoting business tie-up between their member units.
IMC President Mr Gul Kripalani and Mr Mohammed Abdus Salam, CCCI’s Senior Vice President and Head of the Asia Group, signed the document on behalf of their respective Chambers at Hotel Taj Mahal Palace & Tower in Mumbai on January 21.
The agreement came about following a meeting held in honour of an eight-member Bangladesh delegation, headed by Mr Salam, at the IMC premises a day before. The delegation also included : Mr S M Memhmbubul Islam (Tuku), Director of CCCI, Mr Fahim Ahmed Faruk Chowdhury, Director of CCCI and also of International Business forum of bangladesh, Mr Syed Ahsanul Haque (Shameem), MD of FAC Eastern Enterprises Ltd, Mr Mohammed Emdadul Haque Chaudhury (Emdad), CMD of Lucky Group, and others.
“We had a very useful and constructive discussion and arrived at some concrete measures for implementation by both the Chambers to promote two-way trade and to strengthen economic relations between the India and Bangladesh,” Mr Gul Kripalani said.
Quoting a global study by Goldman Sachs, Mr Mohammed Abdus Salam said that Bangladesh was one of the 11 developing nations that, in the long run, would emulate the success of China, India, Brazil and Russia. Bangladesh had successfully come out of the impacts of the global crisis, improved its macro-economic stability factors, and developed potentials to attract more foreign investment.
He said that Bangladesh posted an average growth over 6% GDP growth in the past decade, resulting in raising the level of per-capita income to over $690 at present. “We are country of 150 million people, with middle income group accounting for about 15%, which is a big chunk. As the Bangladesh economy was on a firm growth trajectory, foreign investors venturing into our country at this juncture would reap the early bird’s advantages of sizable fiscal and non-fiscal benefits offered by the government,” he said.
According to Mr Salam, the following sectors offered great development potential for foreign investors: textiles, leather & leather gods, electrical & electrical goods, light engineering, ceramics, information technology, shipbuilding, steel industry, agrobased and processed foods, power & energy. “Bangladesh today offers lucrative business prospects, congenial trade and investment environment to overseas investors,” he asserted.
He said the CCCI’s MoU with IMC would help promote the development bilateral economic relations by providing a platform for businessmen to meet, discuss and explore business opportunities in trade, investments, transfer of technology, services and other industrial sectors.
Both the Chambers would endeavour to develop strong institutional, trade and business relations between them and their members in order to establish a sustainable mechanism of dialogue and platform for discussions, he said.
Source: https://www.imcnet.org/aboutIMC_news.asp?newsid=388
