Dubai: With Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Shaikh Hasina expected to arrive in the UAE on Saturday for a two-day visit, the country’s ambassador to the UAE, Mohammad Imran, highlighted the strong trade and cultural relations the two countries have shared and expressed optimism about many more future collaborations.
Beginning this year, Bangladesh extended a unilateral visa on arrival facility to all UAE nationals and hopes the move will be a catalyst for an even stronger relationship between the two countries.
“We have strong cultural, emotional and trade ties with the UAE. Both Bangladesh and the UAE came into existence within a fortnight of each other in December 1971,” ambassador Imran said.
“The UAE was the first Gulf country to officially recognise Bangladesh and establish diplomatic relations with us. In the last four decades, our relationship has only evolved for the better”.
Remittances made by Bangladeshi expatriates from the UAE to their country are second only to money sent home by Bangladeshis employed in Saudi Arabia. This is because the UAE counts a huge contingent of Bangladeshi workers in its workforce.
“Today our population in the UAE includes skilled and semi-skilled workers who make a meaningful contribution in the construction, manufacturing, hospitality, garment industry, IT, real estate, automobile repair, teaching and banking sectors to name a few.
"We have also made forays into the perfumerie and supermarket field and a new sector where Bangladeshis have established a good reputation in the UAE is the landscaping and maintenance sectors here as well,” he added.
Recounting some of the most significant contributions made by Bangladeshis in the UAE, Imran added, “We built some of the first pre-fabricated mud houses in Abu Dhabi and Al Ain in the seventies. One of our construction companies built the first paved 90-km road in the Western Region and the underground sewage system, both in the late seventies in Abu Dhabi.
An emotional bond
The ambassador recalled the visit of Shaikh Zayed to Bangladesh in 1984. “It was a ten-day-long visit where our government gifted a ten-acre land to the UAE, which is now being converted into a huge medical facility,” he said.
Imran said that Bangladesh was doing very well on the economic front, sharing a very profitable trade relationship with the UAE. The two countries have signed trade agreements and signed many MOUs to foster business partnerships and encourage import-export partnerships. “Our two countries share strong cultural and commercial ties. Bangladesh has been importing crude oil and refined petroleum products from the UAE and re-exporting cotton yarn, electrical machinery from the UAE to the Bangladesh. We export a lot of things from our country to the UAE and these include cotton yarn, garments, frozen fish, edible oil, electronics, among other things. We have established such robust trade ties with the UAE that our two-way trade volume stands at $967 million [Dh3.55 billion] and is on the rise,” he said.
With Bangladeshis representing a substantial segment of the labour force in the UAE, the ambassador was very appreciative of some of the labour-friendly initiatives made by the UAE government, particularly the mandatory mid-day summer break programme. “We were very happy with that and also the health and sanitation initiatives taken by the government for labourers. Our people feel much at home here and this has also inspired us to create special health awareness programmes for our labour force. Many of them fall victim to lifestyle diseases of diabetes, heart disease and hypertension. At our embassy in Abu Dhabi and consulate in Dubai, we are holding free health awareness classes for workers to help them understand health and nutritional issues better.
“Currently many cases of Bangladeshis succumbing to lifestyle diseases are coming to the fore and we are holding free health camps for all, sending our consular officers and medical teams to labour camps and holding health awareness camps periodically.”
No effort is being spared by the embassy or consulate to educate the average Bangladeshi national about respecting the conventions and practices of the UAE, the ambassador said. “We are taking a very proactive approach and have taken upon ourselves the responsibility of familiarising our compatriots with the laws of the host country,” he added.
An indicator of UAE’s serious contribution to Bangladesh’s economy is the investment it has made in that country in the industrial sector and the employment generated by such projects for many in their home country. “The UAE is a major foreign investor in Bangladesh making a $2.9 billion [Dh10.65 billion] investment in our country. The Ras Al Khaimah investment authority has made a series of investments in our country like setting up RAK Ceramics factory and in the real estate and pharmaceutical sectors, providing employment to many. Other industries such as the DP world, the Abu Dhabi Investment Fund, the IPIC Abu Dhabi are also exploring areas of investment in Bangladesh,” he said.
The ambassador said that trade and cultural relations between the two countries were at an all-time high and poised for massive advances in the coming years. “We are very optimistic that the UAE and Bangladesh will take this relationship to a new and meaningful level in the coming years,” he added.
