The Taipei Representative Office in Dhaka, Bangladesh, will officially begin operations on Monday after a year-long negotiation process between the two countries, the Minis-try of Foreign Affairs announced yesterday.
Bangladesh is the second country in South Asia where Taiwan has opened a representative office -- the first being the Taipei Economic and Cultural Center in New Delhi, India, which was opened in 1995.
"I am very glad to announce the significant advance in our foreign relations with the establishment of the office in Bangladesh," Minister of Foreign Affairs Eugene Chien (
The office will provide consular and other services to various sectors in Taiwan and Bangladesh and enhance bilateral cooperation in fields such as trade, culture, education and technology, the ministry said.
The first Taiwanese representative to Bangladesh is Frank Chen (
The Bangladeshi government will announce the date on which its representative office in Taipei is to be opened in the near future, Chien said.
Bangladesh has had limited bilateral exchanges with Taiwan since it declared independence in 1971.
In 2002, the overall trade volume between Bangladesh and Taiwan amounted to about US$370 million, according to the ministry.
The establishment of the office in Dhaka will reinforce Taiwan's trade relations in South Asia and is expected to help the country to explore the region's huge markets and seek opportunities for participation in regional organizations, Chien said.
The employment of Bangladeshi laborers in Taiwan was a key issue on the agenda during negotiations on the establishment of representative offices, he said.
According to the ministry more than a dozen Taiwanese companies are operating in Bangladesh, with the majority of them in labor-intensive industries such as textiles and the production of electrical goods.
The ministry said that textiles and machinery produced in Taiwan have been popular in Bangladesh for many years.
Referring to Bangladesh, China, India and Vietnam as the four "world factory" countries, Chien said local businesspeople have been eagerly calling for the establishment of mutual representative offices in Bangladesh and Taiwan.
Businessmen from South Korea and other countries were also actively exploring the Bangladeshi market, according to the ministry.
The office in Dhaka will help Taiwanese companies to negotiate with the Bangladeshi government over business opportunities and resolve difficulties in applications for visas and residence permits, the ministry said.
In the past, businesspeople traveling between Bangladesh and Taiwan had to apply for visas in either Bangkok or Hong Kong, which caused delays of up to three days in each direction.
Gary Lin (
Despite its close ties with China, the government of Bangladesh is unlikely to give in to pressure to change its decision to establish mutual representative offices, Lin said.
Formerly known as East Paki-stan, Bangladesh is located at a pivotal position on the South Asian subcontinent between India and Myanmar.
The country covers an area of 144,000km2 -- about four times the size of Taiwan. Of its 130 million people, 87 percent are Muslim. The GNP of the country is around US$38.3 billion.
The paramount chief of a volcanic island in Vanuatu yesterday said that he was “very impressed” by a UN court’s declaration that countries must tackle climate change. Vanuatu spearheaded the legal case at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands, which on Wednesday ruled that countries have a duty to protect against the threat of a warming planet. “I’m very impressed,” George Bumseng, the top chief of the Pacific archipelago’s island of Ambrym, told reporters in the capital, Port Vila. “We have been waiting for this decision for a long time because we have been victims of this climate change for
MASSIVE LOSS: If the next recall votes also fail, it would signal that the administration of President William Lai would continue to face strong resistance within the legislature The results of recall votes yesterday dealt a blow to the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) efforts to overturn the opposition-controlled legislature, as all 24 Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers survived the recall bids. Backed by President William Lai’s (賴清德) DPP, civic groups led the recall drive, seeking to remove 31 out of 39 KMT lawmakers from the 113-seat legislature, in which the KMT and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) together hold a majority with 62 seats, while the DPP holds 51 seats. The scale of the recall elections was unprecedented, with another seven KMT lawmakers facing similar votes on Aug. 23. For a
Taiwan must invest in artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics to keep abreast of the next technological leap toward automation, Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) said at the luanch ceremony of Taiwan AI and Robots Alliance yesterday. The world is on the cusp of a new industrial revolution centered on AI and robotics, which would likely lead to a thorough transformation of human society, she told an event marking the establishment of a national AI and robotics alliance in Taipei. The arrival of the next industrial revolution could be a matter of years, she said. The pace of automation in the global economy can
All 24 lawmakers of the main opposition Chinese Nationalists Party (KMT) on Saturday survived historical nationwide recall elections, ensuring that the KMT along with Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) lawmakers will maintain opposition control of the legislature. Recall votes against all 24 KMT lawmakers as well as Hsinchu Mayor Ann Kao (高虹安) and KMT legislative caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅崐萁) failed to pass, according to Central Election Commission (CEC) figures. In only six of the 24 recall votes did the ballots cast in favor of the recall even meet the threshold of 25 percent of eligible voters needed for the recall to pass,
RSS