Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: The Bangladesh High Commission in Islamabad organised an event on LDC Graduation Of Bangladesh – A Celebration Of Socio-Economic Development at a local hotel of Lahore.

Being the capital of dominant Punjab, Lahore is the hub of education, culture, civil society and industry.

The event, conducted by the Honorary Consul General of Bangladesh in Lahore Qazi Humayun Farid, was aimed at enlightening the audience on Bangladesh’s graduation into the developing country status as well as to portray positive image of Bangladesh in Pakistan.

The venue was tastefully decorated with a banner and a good number of poster-sized framed photographs depicting socio-economic development of Bangladesh.

At the beginning, the Bangladesh High Commissioner to Pakistan Tarik Ahsan spoke on the topic. He gave a background of colonial exploitation, indifference to development by the pre-independence rulers and challenges of rehabilitation of war-devastated country that put Bangladesh in the category of least developed countries in the 1970s. He highlighted impressive achievements of Bangladesh in socio-economic development, particularly in about last one decade under the government of Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

He remarked that a clear recognition of these achievements is the fact that Bangladesh has been qualified in March this year with significant margins on all three criteria of the United Nations for graduation from a less developed country to a developing country status.

It was also revealed that Bangladesh had been upgraded to medium human development category of United Nations Development Programme and lower middle income category of World Bank in recent years.

The high commissioner indicated that Bangladesh assumed a prominent position in South Asia in areas of women empowerment, disaster management, primary healthcare, sanitation, primary education as well as growth rate, export earning, remittance earning, reserve position, expansion of energy base, mobile and ICT use, etc.

The high commissioner’s speech was followed by a video message of UN Secretary General on Bangladesh’s graduation into the developing category. A presentation titled LDC Graduation of Bangladesh – Significance & Way Forward was also made at this time.

The event was rounded off with a dinner for all guests.

The guests included educationists, representatives of think-tanks, members of cultural community, journalists, businesspersons, former diplomats, politicians and Bangladesh expatriates. Among the prominent guests, names of former foreign minister Khurshid Mahmood Kasuri, Punjab Minister of Environment Zakia Shahnawaz, Member Punjab Assembly Iram Hassan Bajwa and former foreign secretary Shamsad Ahmed are worth-mentioning.

Published in Daily Times, April 21^st 2018.