Govt to honour 57 non-resident Bangladeshis with CIP status

The government has selected 57 non-resident Bangladeshis to honour them with commercially important person (CIP) status for their contribution to the south Asian country's economy.

Of the NRB-CIP award recipients, 47 will be honoured for sending the highest amount of remittance through formal channels, nine for importing Bangladeshi products to foreign countries and one for making direct investment in the industrial sector.

Of the selected CIPs, 37 live in the Middle East, three in the USA, two each in the UK, Japan, Italy, Russia, Malaysia and Thailand and one each in Canada, Australia, Singapore, Maldives and Cambodia.

The highest number of the NRB-CIPs, 26, came from the UAE and two of them are women. Oman is second in the list with nine of the selected ones.

The three categories have 18 who were born in Chattogram.

On November 24, the expatriates' welfare and overseas employement ministry shared the list of the selected ones for the NRB-CIP status for 2019 in three separate categories through a gazette signed by Mohammed Rehan Uddin, deputy secretary of the ministry.

The government is scheduled to hand over the certificates among the non-resident Bangladeshi CIPs through a programme in Dhaka on the occasion of International Migrants Day on December 18.

Under the NRB-CIP status, which remains valid for two years, the recipients will enjoy different facilities, including access to the secretariat with the identity card given by the government, become a member of different policy making committees of the government, get priority in meetings with local and foreign high officials and become a guest in important national day events organised by Bangladesh missions abroad.  

The CIPs will also get priority for getting reserved seats in airways, railways, road and waterways and they will also get access to the VIP lounges in the airports.

Even, the wife and children of a CIP will get priority in case of getting cabin booking in government hospitals.

The non-resident CIPs always enjoy facilities like a foreign investor when they enter Bangladesh.