{"id":67824,"date":"2017-07-14T15:52:03","date_gmt":"2017-07-14T22:52:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=67824"},"modified":"2017-07-14T15:52:03","modified_gmt":"2017-07-14T22:52:03","slug":"bangladesh-lanka-sign-14-instruments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2017\/07\/14\/bangladesh-lanka-sign-14-instruments\/","title":{"rendered":"Bangladesh, Lanka sign 14 instruments"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2 class=\"imgcont2 col-lg-12\"><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>By Mizan Rahman\/Dhaka\u00a0Courtesy \u00a0Gulf Times<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>Bangladesh and Sri Lanka yesterday signed 14 instruments beginning a \u2018historic journey\u2019 in their bilateral relations as the Sri Lankan president termed his visit to Bangladesh a \u2018historic one.<br \/>\nThe instruments &#8211; one agreement and 13 memorandums of understanding (MoUs) &#8211; were signed to strengthen co-operation between the two countries in the areas of economy, agriculture, shipping, higher education, information and technology and media.<br \/>\nSri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina witnessed the signing of the instruments at the Prime Minister\u2019s Office (PMO) following a bilateral meeting\u00a0between the two leaders.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"img-responsive imgdetails\" title=\"*\" src=\"http:\/\/img.gulf-times.com\/Content\/Upload\/slider\/7201714238335107241700.jpg\" alt=\"*\" \/><br \/>\nBangladesh and Sri Lanka also agreed to sign free trade agreement (FTA) by this year, aiming to further strengthen bilateral trade co-operation.<br \/>\nAfter the signing, Foreign Secretary Shahidul Haque briefed reporters.<br \/>\nThe foreign secretary said the FTA with Sri Lanka would be Bangladesh\u2019s first such deal with any country and necessary study would be done prior to signing of the agreement.<br \/>\nThe lone agreement on visa waiver for diplomatic and official passport holders of the two countries was signed by Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan and Sri Lankan Foreign<br \/>\nMinister Ravi Karunanayake.<br \/>\nHe said that if the FTA was inked it would help Bangladesh sign such FTAs with other countries. He also mentioned that there are some FTAs in the pipeline.<br \/>\nTo me, this is a big political process towards trade and investment between the two countries,\u201d he added.<br \/>\nAbout signing of 14 instruments and deals after the official talks, Haq said seven of these were on trade and investment which means that the two sides highly focused on boosting trade relations.<br \/>\nAbout the MoU on agriculture co-operation, Haq said Sri Lanka wants to develop its agriculture sector taking lessons from Bangladesh\u2019s\u00a0tremendous success.<br \/>\nPointing out the co-operation on higher education, he said a large number of medical students from Sri Lanka are studying in Bangladesh and the two sides signed the MoU to further enhance co-operation in the sector.<br \/>\nBesides, an agreement on visa rebate of the official and diplomatic passport holders was also signed, aiming to make official level consultations more effective, he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Mizan Rahman\/Dhaka\u00a0Courtesy \u00a0Gulf Times Bangladesh and Sri Lanka yesterday signed 14 instruments beginning a \u2018historic journey\u2019 in their bilateral relations as the Sri Lankan president termed his visit to Bangladesh a \u2018historic one. The instruments &#8211; one agreement and 13 memorandums of understanding (MoUs) &#8211; were signed to strengthen co-operation between the two countries [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-67824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67824"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67824\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}