President Xi Jinping Tour: Bangladesh, China firms ink $13.6b deal

DHAKA: Bangladeshi and Chinese firms have signed $13.6 billion in trade and investment deals on the sidelines of President Xi Jinping’s brief tour to the South Asian nation, a trade group official said Saturday. The deals are in addition to $20 billion in loan agreements that the two governments signed on Friday, in a mark of Beijing’s growing ties with Dhaka, which is a very close ally of regional power India. “These trade and investment deals are between Chinese companies and Bangladesh private sector. They are worth $13.6 billion,” Abdul Matlub Ahmad, head of the Federation of Bangladesh Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FBCCI), told AFP. Ahmad said the deals reflect Dhaka’s improving security situation after Bangladesh launched a deadly crackdown on Islamist extremists following an attack on a posh restaurant in the capital in which suspected militants killed 22, mostly foreign hostages.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 16^th, 2016.

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