Dhaka, Delhi sign 6 MoUs

Dhaka and New Delhi yesterday signed six deals including one for the construction of 130km-long pipeline to import petroleum from India and one for cooperation on capacity building regarding Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant project.

"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," said visiting Indian Foreign Secretary Vijay Keshav Gokhale.

India remains fully committed to playing a useful role as Bangladesh's development partner as Bangladesh advances to become a middle-income country by 2021 and a developed country by 2041, Gokhale said. He congratulated Bangladesh on achieving a very significant milestone in meeting the criteria for graduating from LDC to a developing country.

He made the remarks before the media after nearly three-hour delegation-level talks with his Bangladesh counterpart Md Shahidul Haque that ended with the signing of the deals.

The agreements are: (i) Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on Construction of the India-Bangladesh Friendship Pipeline between Siliguri and Parbatipur; (ii) Addendum to the Inter-Agency Agreement between Bangladesh Atomic Energy Commission (BAEC) and Global Centre for Nuclear Energy Partnership (GCNEO) of India; (iii) MoU on Cooperation between Prasar Bharati and Bangladesh Betar; (iv) MoU between Dhaka University and Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) on establishment of the ICCR Rabindra Chair for Urdu Language, (v) MoU on establishment of computer and language labs in 509 schools in Bangladesh; and (vi) MoU on Rehabilitation and improvement of different roads in Rangpur City Corporation.

"This is part of our endeavour to undertake projects in Bangladesh in various socioeconomic sectors, including education, culture, health, community welfare, road infrastructure, etc for which we are providing Tk 1,600 crore under grant financing," the Indian diplomat said.

Vijay Gokhale further said India remains a committed development partner of Bangladesh and they have extended lines of credit of over $8 billion to the neighbour in the last seven years.

"This is the largest amount of credit India has ever committed to any single country. We're confident that this credit will be useful to Bangladesh as it pursues its developmental priorities," he added.

The pipeline would be built from Siliguri Marketing Terminal of the Numaligarh Refinery Ltd (NRL) in India to the Parbatipur Depot of Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation (BPC) for transportation of high-speed diesel.

Earlier, NRL and BPC had signed a Sale-Purchase Agreement which included a joint initiative to construct a 130km-long pipeline with capacity of 1 million tonnes per annum from Siliguri to Parbatipur.

Of the 130km pipeline to be named as Indo-Bangla Friendship Pipeline, 125km will be inside Bangladesh. Official sources said the Indian government would provide about Rs 303 crore as grant to set up the pipeline in Bangladesh. In return, BPC would import diesel from NRL's Numaligarh refinery for 15 years.

The sources added that the BPC would import 66,000 tonnes of diesel, equivalent to 30 oil-tanker trains, from NRL in the period between May to December this year. This was decided at a meeting between NRL and BPC in Shillong last month.

A goodwill train containing 2,284 tonnes of diesel from NRL's Siliguri Marketing Terminal to Bangladesh was flagged off in April, 2017, by the two premiers through a remote device in New Delhi.

The deal related to the Inter-Agency Agreement between BAEC and GCNEO envisages cooperation in organising capacity building programmes for BAEC's personnel in areas related to design principles, construction, quality assurance, commissioning, operation, project management and regulatory aspects of nuclear power plants.

Under the two small development projects, India will provide grant assistance of Tk 25 crore for setting up computer and language labs in 509 schools. Another Tk 25 crore grant would be given for rehabilitation and improvement of different streets under Rangpur City Corporation.

The MoU between Prasar Bharati and Bangladesh Betar proposes shared broadcast content and takes up cooperation of programmes of common interest.