Thai Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn coming to Bangladesh

Thailand’s Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn will arrive in Dhaka Monday on a four-day royal visit to Bangladesh.

Senior Correspondentbdnews24.com
Published : 27 May 2018, 02:59 PM
Updated : 27 May 2018, 03:31 PM

Announcing her visit, Bangladesh Ambassador to Thailand Saida Muna Tasneem said this would be the ‘highest profile visit’ from Thailand in recent years.

“It is also a significant milestone in the bilateral relations between the two Bay of Bengal countries,” she said in a statement.

Princess Sirindhorn is coming at the invitation of Foreign Minister AH Mahmood Ali.

The relations between Bangladesh and Thailand got an impetus in the last couple of years. The two foreign ministers sat in the Joint Commission meeting last year, first in two decades.

Thailand also sent a high-powered business delegation this month to take a new look at the trade and economic ties. The two-way trade stood at $1.31 billion last year, up from around $1 billion in 2016. Bangladesh is targeting to take it to $2 billion by 2021.

The Thai princess will lead an 11-member high profile government delegation in connection with philanthropy projects she set up in Bangladesh in 2011 under her father, late King Bhumibol Adulyadej's Royal Chai Pattana Foundation, the foreign ministry said.                   

She will meet Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, Foreign Minister Ali and exchange views with Agriculture Minister Matia Chowdhury and Cultural Affairs Minister Asaduzzaman Noor.

The Bangladesh embassy in Bangkok said Princess Sirindhorn is also scheduled to visit ongoing royal projects in Bangladesh, under the Royal Chaipattana Foundation including public health and sanitation projects for school children, and sustainable agriculture projects for farmers, and the Sufficiency Economy Learning Centre at the Bangladesh Agriculture Development Corporation.
 
All are under the Sufficiency Economy Philosophy pioneered by her father.
 
The princess is also scheduled to inaugurate a new environmental conservation project in collaboration with the environment and forest ministry, titled “Bangladesh-Thailand Vetiver Grass Development Project to prevent hill erosion in Chottogram” on Mar 30 at the Tiger Pass in Chottogram City.
 
She will visit the Liberation War Museum in Dhaka, the Ethnological Origins Museum in Chottogram and meet autistic and special children at the Proyash Institute of Special Education in Dhaka Cantonment. She wll go to see children and farmers at the Azampur Government Primary School, Uttara, Mariali Government Primary School, Gazipur and Bangladesh Agricultural Development Corporation in Dhaka.
 
The foreign minister will host a dinner in her honour.