Bangladesh shifts focus from WTO to World Economic Forum

Bangladesh has shifted its focus from the World Trade Organisation or WTO to World Economic Forum (WEF) at Davos in what the foreign secretary called an 'innovative' foreign policy move.

Speaking at a seminar on Bangladesh’s foreign policy on Wednesday, Md Shahidul Haque said Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was invited to attend the Davos forum this month again. According to him, it is a rare move by the organisers to invite a leader for the second year in a row.
 
“But she will not be able to join. The foreign minister will represent her,” he said at the Bangladesh Institute of International and Strategic Studies or BIISS.
 
The annual meeting will be attended by 350 governmental leaders - over 60 of whom are heads of state or government - the chairs and chief executives of the world’s most important companies and over 1,000 leaders from civil society, academia and the media.
 
The theme of this year's meeting at the end of January is ‘Creating a Shared Future in a Fractured World’.
 
Hasina was the first elected Bangladesh leader to have been invited to attend the forum last year.
 
The foreign secretary, speaking on the Bangladesh foreign policy, said they are also “innovative”.
 
“We realised two to three years ago that WTO is gradually getting less and less important. We will not be able to make our presence felt as we are moving out of LDCs leadership.
 
“We looked at the world. We realised that the WEF is a good forum for making the Bangladesh brand. Our prime minister went there for the first time. We [foreign ministry] have been engaging with them ...they have a different way of looking at things,” he said.
 
“The WEF is a fascinating way of projecting and branding Bangladesh,” he said.