Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Thursday called upon both the public and private sectors of the Maldives to be partners in Bangladesh’s development journey in the next 50 for mutual benefits.

“I call upon both the government and private sectors of the Maldives to be our partners in the development journey in the next fifty years for mutual benefits,” she said.

Sheikh Hasina made the call while speaking at the People’s Majlis, Maldives (the Maldivian Parliament) with its Speaker Mohamed Nasheed in the chair.

She hoped that the warm and friendly relations between the two countries will further be consolidated as Bangladesh is thriving on possibilities and potentials. “We believe no country in the world can prosper in isolation.”

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Hasina mentioned that the Covid-19 pandemic taught that all are interdependent and have to share their experiences for the sake of a better, secure, and prosperous world.

“We reiterate our principled position of collaboration with our fraternal neighbours in South Asia, as had been enunciated by our Father of the Nation,” she said adding, “We’re particularly encouraged to witness your development journey, your successful transition from LDC to a middle-Income country, and we hope Bangladesh and the Maldives would tap the complementarities.”

The Prime Minister described 2021 as a landmark year for Bangladesh-Maldives bilateral relations with the exchange of high-level visits, fruitful bilateral discussions among relevant authorities, and goodwill exchange of collaboration on many areas of bilateral interests.

“We firmly believe we would further consolidate our bilateral relations through further expansion of trade, investment, connectivity, tourism, and people-to-people contacts,” she hoped.

Hasina said the next 50 years’ journey will be even more fruitful with meaningful changes to the lives of the people of the two countries.

Briefly describing the history of Bangladesh, its Independence, role, struggle and sacrifice of the Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, she Bangabandhu laid down the foundation of the path to socio-economic freedom for Bangladesh after the independence.

Following his footsteps and inspired by this economic and political philosophy, she said, “I am happy to share that Bangladesh has achieved remarkable progress in the last one decade.”

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The average GDP growth registered in the previous few years has been more than 7 percent, while in 2019-20, just before the pandemic, our DGP growth rate was 8.2 percent, the Prime Minister said.

“During the last decade, Bangladesh has also made remarkable progress in socio-economic indicators, including women empowerment, maternal and child health, life expectancy, population growth rate, sanitation, drinking water, primary education, and literacy,” Hasina said.

In continuation of Bangladesh’s development journey, she said, “We’ve to transform Bangladesh into a middle-income country by 2021, meet all the SDG targets by 2031, turn into a knowledge-based developed country by 2041, and a prosperous and resilient Delta by 2100.”

The Prime Minister went on saying, “As you may be aware that on November 24, 2021, the UN General Assembly unanimously adopted the resolution on Graduation of Bangladesh from the LDC category.”

She mentioned that Bangladesh is now a US-$411 billion economy and is ranked among the 34 largest economies of the world.

“However, development brings its own challenges. To cope with the situation that we’ll face after the withdrawal of the benefits we used to enjoy [benefits] as an LDC, our focus will be on diversifying the economy and exploring new markets. We’re also striving to transform into a technology-driven society and innovation-led growth with a vision of Digital Bangladesh.”

The Maldivian Speaker presented Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina a boat painting.