During the visit, Ambassador Milan Hovorka met Hon´ble Asaduzzaman Khan, Minister of Home Affairs,   Mr. Hossain Bhuiya, Secretary of the Ministry of Defence, Mr Shubhashish Bose, Secretary of the Ministry of Commerce, Md. Nazrul Islam, Director General of the European Division of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,   High Officers of Bangladesh Armed Forces and representatives of the Federation of Bangladesh Chambers of Commerce and Industry.

 

 

The meetings focused on the current state of bilateral contractual arrangements, exploration of potential for trade and economic cooperation, the Rohingya refugee crisis, humanitarian and developmen assistance provided by the Czech Republic to Bangladesh, and a series of activities to be organized in the period ahed to promote networking between business of the two countries.

 

 

At the moment, the Czech Republic and Bangladesh are on the verge of signing an economic cooperation agreement. They are exploring the possibilites to conclude a deal on defence cooperation  and are about to start negotiations on the double taxation avoidance agreement.

 

 

Interacting with his partners, Ambassador Milan Hovorka informed them that in response to the Rohingya refugee crises, the Czech Republic  offered a humanitarian assistance to Bangladesh amounting to USD five hundred million to be chanelled througn the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and bilaterally through projects implemented by Czech non-profit organizations.

 

 

Mutual economic cooperation was high on the agenda of all the meetings. The Ambassador was pleased that he could say that the Czech Republic and Bangladesh have a fairly good trade record in which Bangaldesh benefits enormously from duty and quota free access provided by European Union to which the Czech Republic is a member under the Everything But Arms initiative. The two sides were linke minded in their intentions to take the economic cooperation further in sectors like energy, manufacturing, defence, mobility and environment protection.

 

 

The Ambassador also was keen to pay tribute during his visit to the first Bangladeshi president Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and visit some of development assistance projects carried out by the Government of the Czech Republic.