Bangladesh, Vietnam eye $1 billion trade in 2016

Bangladesh and Vietnam have agreed to take their bilateral trade volume to $1 billion within next year.

President Md Abdul Hamid and his Vietnam counterpart Truong Tan Sang concurred to remove barriers in trade at a meeting in Hanoi on Monday.

Hamid is on a four-day state visit there.

The current bilateral trade volume is below $700 million, according to the foreign ministry.

In the 2013-14 fiscal, Bangladesh exported goods worth $55.95 million to Vietnam and imported goods costing $582.24 million. 

The trade deficit is increasing every year.

Hamid and Sang also discussed preventing drug and human trafficking and exchanging policymaking opinion at the political and diplomatic level, his Press Secretary Md Joynal Abedin said.

They talked about high-level visits, joint economic commission meetings, and exchange of market information, among others.

“In the meeting, the president said Bangladesh provides generous incentives to investors,” he said. 

“We’ll give highest priority to Vietnam’s investments and anything related to it,” Abedin quoted the president as telling President Sang.

The Bangladesh leader also sought Vietnam’s support for ASEAN membership and Sang assured him.

He lauded Bangladesh’s political stability and economic development, Hamid’s Press Secretary Abedin said.

The Vietnam president said Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s 2012 visit to his country took the bilateral relations forward.

He hoped President Hamid’s visit would remain as a ‘milestone’ and take bilateral relations to a ‘new height’.

Hamid invited Sang to visit Bangladesh.