JAYANTA ROY CHOWDHURY
Pranab Mukherjee with his Bangladeshi counterpart Abul Maal Abdul Muhith in Dhaka on Saturday. (AP)
Dhaka, Aug. 8 : Finance minister Pranab Mukherjee today announced a slew of initiatives to address a growing feeling in Bangladesh that India is doing little for its eastern neighbour.
During his shortest ever visit to any foreign nation, Mukherjee proposed measures that would facilitate communication across the border. Bangladeshi trucks going to Nepal will be allowed to use Indian roads from this year. Trains will also be allowed once India builds rail links to Nepal.
A meeting of the joint boundary commission of the two nations in September will work out ways of swapping Indian enclaves with Bangla zones in India, a long-standing demand of Bangladesh.
A bridge over the river Feni to link the two nations and custom stations at Tripura and Mizoram borders are on the agenda to help Bangladesh sell more to India.
Mukherjee also proposed to renew a deal that would allow Bangladesh to sell eight million pieces of garments to India every year.
The announcements were made in a packed hall at Jamuna, which used to be Khaleda Zia’s residence when she was the Prime Minister of Bangladesh.
In the presence of Pranab Mukherjee and other diplomats from the two countries, India today signed a $1-billion loan agreement with Bangladesh.
Under the deal, India will lend the amount, the biggest it has offered to any foreign country, at a 1.75 per cent interest rate with a repayment period of 20 years, including a grace period of five years. The credit will be used by Bangladesh to develop railway and other communication infrastructure.
“This is more than double the assistance Bangladesh has got in the last 40 years from India … it’s one of the best deals,” said Abul Maal Abdul Muhith, Mukherjee’s counterpart in Bangladesh.
India needed to make some big announcements to address the Bangla grievance. The Opposition in Bangladesh has accused the current Sheikh Hasina government of offering one-sided concessions to India.
Hasan Shahriar, a leading political analyst, said, “India has made a good beginning, this was needed. Pranabda’s visit did a world of good to our relations … otherwise Sheikh Hasina would have had problems.”
The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), however, said the $1-billion deal was against the national interest. “The government is getting the loan from the Indian bank with an interest rate seven times higher than that from any multi-national bank or donor agency,” BNP said in a statement yesterday.