Cabinet approves MoUs with Bangladesh

Ahead of Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's visit to India this week, the Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved various bilateral MOUs on river transport, judicial cooperation, audio-visual cooperation and media.

Among these Memoranda of Understanding (MoUs) is one on the development of Ashuganj-Zakiganj stretch of Kushiyara river and Sirajganj-Daikhawa stretch of the Jamuna river to improve connectivity between the two countries.

An official release said the MoU will help reduce logistics cost of cargo movement to northeast India and also reduce congestion through the Siliguri's Chicken's Neck corridor.

Both countries will undertake necessary dredging jointly via the India-Bangladesh protocol route.

Another MoU pertains to passenger cruise services on coastal and protocol routes between India and Bangladesh to ferry people on water crafts between the two countries.

The MoU that got the nod aims at strengthening mutual cooperation between the judiciaries of the two countries through exchange of knowledge in infrastructure and information technology.

The agreement in audio-visual field will cover coproduction of films, documentaries, animations films, and utilisation of Indian locales for shooting.

India has so far entered into audio-visual co-production agreements with Italy, the United Kingdom, Germany, Brazil, France, New Zealand, Poland, Spain, Canada, China and South Korea.

The MoU on mass media will facilitate training and study tour of media personnel and cooperation between educational, training and research institutions in mass media field.

This will also facilitate accredited mass media representatives to set up offices on reciprocity basis in the two countries.

India and Bangladesh are set to ink 35 agreements during the visit of Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to India from April 7 to 10.

Hasina's last visit to India was in January 2010. Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Bangladesh in June 2015.

--IANS

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