Colombo, 21 May 2018

This weekend, (Saturday, 19 May), Bangladesh High Commission in Colombo reached out to a distinct crowd of academia, researchers and post-graduate students at the prestigious Faculty of Graduate Studies of the University of Colombo, in apprising them of Bangladesh’s recent graduation from LDC status. Bangladesh High Commissioner Riaz Hamidullah addressed at a special event on “Bangladesh’s Journey in Development: Moving beyond LDC; and Perspectives on Regionalism”. Senior Professor Nayani Melegoda, Dean of the Faculty of Graduate Studies of the University moderated the event.

The event, organised together with the Faculty of Graduate Studies at the Colombo University, commenced with a screening of a specially-tailored documentary highlighting key aspects of Bangladesh’s history, culture, geography and different facets of contemporary development.

In his 45-minute presentation, the High Commissioner underlined inter alia the values and features of Bengali people and nationalism, people’s yearning for the values, Bangabandhu’s leadership in steering the War of Liberation. He summarised how Bangladesh’s development across the society and economy over the past four and half decades have come about in spite of various constraints and limitations. He shared the vision and the key measures and initiatives undertaken by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina over past decade in setting Bangladesh as a responsive - responsible - harmonious State and a stable, rapidly growing economy. He elaborated on Bangladesh’s vision and approach to multi-modal connectivity and outreach to South Asian region and beyond where Sri Lanka can innovatively collaborate with Bangladesh as a newly emerged MIC, for example within global apparel supply chain and logistics.

The High Commissioner also shared a number of Bangladesh’s developmental indigenous solutions and experience across sectors which are now replicated internationally. He pointed that some of Bangladeshi experience, knowledge in agriculture, rural development, disaster management can help Sri Lanka in addressing her unique challenges.

The two-hour event concluded with the donation of a selection of books by the High Commissioner on Bangladesh’s development, history, culture to the Faculty of Graduate Studies, which “would enrich the Library’s collection on Bangladesh and provide useful references for the research students”, said the Director in appreciation.