Dhaka and Beijing decided on Monday to work closely to settle down procedural problems that held back several proposals of Chinese investment in public sector infrastructure projects. The meeting on Bangla-desh-China joint commission on economic, trade, scientific and technical cooperation also decided that Both the Asian economies would hold a review meeting in every three months in Dhaka to remove bottlenecks and step up economic cooperation, as around half a dozen project loans were expected to be signed shortly. ‘We are facing some procedural problems, but no serious obstacles towards the implementation of projects at Chinese loan,’ economic relations division secretary Mohammad Mejbahuddin told reporters on Monday after the meeting. ‘You will probably see concessional loan agreements on five or six projects to be signed with China shortly, while portfolio review at every three months will expedite project implementation,’ he said. Mohammad Mejbahuddin led delegation and Chinese vice-minister for commerce Gao Yan led the Chinese team at the bilateral meeting held at the economic relations division conference room. Mejbahuddin said that the meeting was fruitful as China showed positive signal to a Bangladesh proposal seeking duty free market access for its 17 products including apparel, footwear and lead-acid battery to Chinese market. China assured Bangladesh of providing it with 1,000 fire motor cycles as a grant. A letter of exchange was signed in this respect. Meeting sources said that Bangladesh handed a list of 19 projects involving nearly $13 billion to Chinese counterparts and urged the Chinese delegation head to expedite the implementation of the almost negotiated deals at the earliest. Mejbahuddin said that China showed keen interest to invest in the proposed apparel village in Munshiganj and urged Bangladesh to ready the proposed Chinese Economic Zone in Chittagong. ‘China is interested in investing here and keen to see Bangladesh as their one of the major investment partners,’ he said. Responding to a question, he said that China had agreed to accept the limited tendering method for awarding contracts under a competitive bid arrangement to implement projects in Bangladesh. ‘They have agreed on limited tendering, on which we are working to finalise mechanism on the agreed method of contract awarding to Chinese state-owned firms.’ Replying to another query, he said that the meeting did not discuss anything on financing and constructing Sonadia deep sea port, or Payra deep sea port at Chinese low-cost loan.
