by admin | May 25, 2021 | Muslim World
By Arul Louis,
United Nations : The number of Bangladeshis living in India has come down by 800,000 since 2000 and now stands at 3.1 million, a UN report said.
In 2000, there were 3.9 million migrants from Bangladesh living in India, according to the 2017 International Migration Report released here on Monday.
It said that the number of migrants from all countries living in India now was 5.2 million, a fall of 1.22 million from 2000.
The definition of international migrants used in the report is broad and takes into account anyone living in a country different from their own and includes refugees and economic migrants, both those immigrating officially and those who do so “irregularly,” said Bela Hovy, the chief of the Migration Section of the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA).
According to data from UNDESA’s Population Division made available with the report, there had been 4.375 million people from Bangladesh living in India in 1990.
There are 35,250 people from India now living in Bangladesh, an increase of 12,439 since 2000 when there were 22,811, according to the data.
The data showed that there were about 258,000 fewer people from Pakistan now living in India than in 2000. There are now 1.095 million people originating from Pakistan in India, while there had been 1.353 million in 2000.
The number of migrants from India living in Pakistan has also come down during the period by about 288,000, according to the data. There were now 1.873 million people from India living in Pakistan now while there had been 2.161 million in 2000.
(Arul Louis can be reached at arul.l@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Business, Corporate, Corporate Buzz, Large Enterprise, Muslim World
Mumbai : Reliance Infrastructure (RInfra) on Wednesday announced it has won two major engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contracts in Bangladesh valued at Rs 5,000 crore through an international competitive bidding.
The first EPC contract is for setting up the entire infrastructure of a 750 MW liquefied natural gas (LNG)-based combined cycle power plant at Meghnaghat near Dhaka.
The second project is for building a 500 million metric square cubic feet per day (mmscfd) floating storage regasification unit-based integrated LNG terminal project at Kutubdia Island.
“Both the contracts are to be executed in a project schedule of 24 months, and are to be completed by 2019.
“The integrated LNG terminal project works would include setting up jetty and onshore and offshore gas pipelines,” an RInfra release said here.
“This power project win comes after winning an EPC order for Rs 3,675 crore from NLC India Ltd for setting up two lignite based thermal power projects of 250 MW capacity each,” RInfra Chief Executive (EPC) Arun Gupta, said in the statement.
On Tuesday, subsidiary firm Reliance Power (R-Power) announced that the Asian Development Bank (ADB) had approved its debt financing and partial risk guarantees totalling $583 million for the integrated project in Bangladesh.
Last week, it announced the signing of the project agreements for executing the first phase of its gas-fired power plant and LNG terminal integrated project.
R-Power said the Terminal Use Agreement for the LNG Terminal project was signed with Bangladesh state-run PetroBangla.
“The project agreements for the power project have already been executed with Bangladesh Power Development Board,” it added.
The integrated project entails an investment outlay of over $1 billion, which represents the largest foreign direct investment (FDI) in Bangladesh and the largest investment in the country’s energy sector, the statement said.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Corporate, Corporate Governance, News, Politics
Dhaka-Kolkata Maitree Express
By Sujit Chakraborty,
Agartala : India and Bangladesh will restore the pre-1965 status of rail connections between the two neighbours, Bangladesh Railway Minister Mazibul Hoque said here.
“India and Bangladesh will jointly restore the pre-1965 status of our rail connections.
“Currently India and Bangladesh have four operational rail links between West Bengal and western Bangladesh. More rail connections would be restored in the near future,” Hoque told IANS here on Friday night.
“The Agartala-Akhaura (Bangladesh) new rail link will be operational within a year. Funded by India, the necessary works for laying the new 15-km rail track between Agartala railway station and Akhaura railway station has already started.”
The Bangladesh Minister is here to attend the Rotary Clubs of India and Bangladesh’s two-day third “Setubandhan” international programme.
The state-run Indian Railway Construction Company (Ircon) will lay the five km track on the Indian side while the remaining 10 km would be laid by the Bangladesh railways.
The Rs 963 crore ($145 million) project was finalised in January 2010 when Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina met her then Indian counterpart, Manmohan Singh, in New Delhi.
Former Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu and his Bangladeshi counterpart, Majibul Haque, jointly laid its foundation stone here on July 31 last year.
The Indian government would bear the entire cost of the project. The issue had also figured during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s meeting with Sheikh Hasina during his visit to Dhaka in June 2015.
“India is the best friend of Bangladesh. The country sheltered lakhs of Bangladeshi men and women in the 1971 Liberation War and helped a lot to create a sovereign country of Bangladesh,” said Hoque, who is himself a Bangladeshi “Mukti Yoddha” (freedom fighter) and trained in Tripura during the nine-month-long war.
The four operational railway links between India and Bangladesh are Petrapole-Benapole, Gede-Darshana, Radhikapur-Biral and Singhabad-Rohanpur.
Two more rail connections have been proposed. Feni (Bangladesh)-Belonia (India) will connect Tripura with the Bangladesh sea port of Chittagong, and West Bengal’s Siliguri will connect Panchagarh in North-Western Bangladesh, opening the scope for future cargo movement.
India’s External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj during her visit to Bangladesh earlier this week said a significant area of the bilateral cooperation is the quest to increase connectivity through restoration of pre-1965 links encompassing road, rail, water and coastal shipping.
The frequency of the Dhaka-Maitree express has been increased. The journey time of the Dhaka-Kolkata Maitree Express will be reduced from nine to six hours, by doing away with the two-phased immigration checks at the Indian border of Gede and Bangladesh border of Darshana.
The inaugural commercial run of the Kolkata-Khulna second passenger train service is expected to start by the middle of next month. More bus services linking the cities of Bangladesh and India have also begun.
The Kolkata-Khulna passenger train service was operational till 1965.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Muslim World
Nay Pyi Taw : Myanmar authorities will soon launch a national verification process for refugees who fled violence in Rakhine state to neighbouring Bangladesh, a minister declared on Thursday.
Before the move, Minister at the State Counselor’s Office U Kyaw Tint Swe will travel to Bangladesh for talks with the authorities over the process, according to Minister of Social Welfare, Relief and Resettlement U Win Myat Aye.
The verification process, based on principles to which both Myanmar and Bangladesh agreed in 1993, will be carried out at Taungpyo Latwe village for those who return by road and at Naguya village for those who come back by waterways, Xinhua news agency quoted the minister as saying.
Under the current plan, the verified refugees will be settled at Dargyizar village, he said.
In some Muslim communities in the state, their leaders are said to have decided not to join in the process.
However, State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi urged them in her September 19 speech to respond to the process, saying that they have nothing to lose.
The Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) extremist terrorists attacked police checkposts in Rakhine on August 25 killing 12 security personnel. Myanmar authorities ordered a crack-down which led to over 415,000 Rohingya Muslims fleeing to Bangladesh.
Besides the national verification process, Myanmar authorities are also implementing a rehabilitation and resettlement and long-term development programmes not only for Muslims but also for Rakhines, Mro, Daing-net and Mramagyi as well as the Hindu minority who fled their villages due to extremist terrorists’ attacks, officials said.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Business, Commodities, Commodities News, Corporate, Corporate Buzz, Large Enterprise, Muslim World
Doha : Qatar will sign a 15-year agreement with Bangladesh to export liquefied natural gas (LNG) starting from 2018.
According to the agreement, which will be signed on September 25, Qatar’s RasGas will provide to Bangladesh an annual of 1.8 million tonnes of LNG for the first five years and 2.5 million tonnes a year for the remaining 10 years, Xinhua news agency reported on Friday.
The agreement is considered as the first LNG import deal of Bangladesh, and the deal underscores the rise of South Asia as a new market for fuel, according to Qatari media.
South Asia is emerging as a market of potential for LNG, with Pakistan and Bangladesh set to join India as major consumers.
Bangladesh is planning to invest heavily in fuel imports.
—IANS
