Bangla, India to renew water transit protocol

DHAKA, March 6 – Bangladesh and India are set to renew a key water transit protocol that will boost trade and transit between the two neighbours, top Foreign Ministry sources have said.

Bangladesh and India will meet in Dhaka in the third week of this month to renew the inland water transit and trade deal that will expire on March 31, the New Age newspaper of Bangladesh quoted sources at the Foreign Ministry as saying.

The ‘Protocol on Inland Water Transit and Trade’, which was aimed at boosting the inland water trade between the two neighbours, was renewed in New Delhi on May 1, 2007. It was first renewed in 1999 and then in 2001.

The issue of including Ashuganj as a new port-of-call, especially for easy transport of Indian goods from Kolkata to Agartala through Bangladesh, will not be incorporated into the deal that will be renewed later this month, sources said.

The report said that during the Dhaka visit of India’s External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee on February 9, Bangladesh had hinted to give its nod to the New Delhi’s proposal of including Ashuganj as a new port-of-call in the deal.

All aspects of the deal deal will be finalised by March 10, an official said.

The key protocol was first signed in 1980 under the bilateral trade agreement of 1980 that facilitated mutually-beneficial arrangements for the use of the waterways for commerce, maintaining the river routes within each territories a navigable condition.