Bangladesh and Japan want to elevate the bilateral relations to ‘strategic partnership’ level during Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s upcoming visit to Japan.

The Prime Minister is scheduled to visit Japan from November 29 to December 1, at the invitation of Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.

The planned visit was discussed when the Director General of Southeast and Southwest Asian Affairs of Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs Arima Yutaka met Foreign Secretary Masud Bin Momen in Dhaka on Thursday.

At the meeting, both sides expressed satisfaction at the growing bilateral relations between the two countries.

They particularly highlighted the visit of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to Japan in May 2014, when she and the then Prime Minister of Japan Shinzo Abe elevated the bilateral relations between the countries to ‘Comprehensive Partnership’ level, and also the visit of Shinzo Abe to Bangladesh in September 2014, when the two countries forged deeper economic partnership under BIG-B.

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Both sides expected that during PM Hasina’s upcoming visit, Bangladesh and Japan would foster deeper economic partnership in terms of development cooperation, trade and investment, human resources development, agriculture, ICT, education, defence dialogue and exchanges, people-to-people connectivity, repatriation of Rohingyas, etc.

The two sides also expressed the desire to enhance cooperation in international fora, including on climate change, UN reforms, disarmament and non-proliferation, etc.

Ambassador of Japan to Bangladesh Ito Naoki and Director General (East Asia and Pacific) of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs also joined the meeting.

The Director General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan is on a two-day visit to Dhaka to discuss the preparations of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s upcoming visit to Japan.