Finance minister AMA Muhith is scheduled to visit Japan this week to meet Japan International Cooperation Agency president Akihiko Tanaka and attend an international art festival there.
The finance minister will leave Dhaka on Wednesday and meet the JICA chief on Friday in Japan’s capital Tokyo, according to an official tour itinerary, released on Monday by the finance ministry.
The itinerary, however, did not include any agenda for the meeting with JICA chair, but it is highly expected that the discussion would be centring on the issues on funding big infrastructure projects in Bangladesh.
In October last year, Muhith held talks with the JICA president who assured the minister of the financing the Padma Bridge project.
Earlier in May, the finance minister after attending the annual meeting of the Asian Development Bank in New Delhi told journalists that the ADB and JICA would come back to finance the Padma Bridge project.
At a discussion on the sidelines of the ADB meet in New Delhi, JICA South Asia representative Nakahara Masataka also said that the Japanese agency was prepared to discuss the possibility of renewed funding ‘if the Bangladesh government wanted’.
The finance minister will be back in Dhaka on July 23 after attending Setouchi Triennale Summer Session 2013, an international art festival, which is held every three year to showcase the richness of art and culture on a global stage.
This year Bangladesh will participate in the summer session, beginning on July 20 in Takamatsu, Kagawa prefecture of Japan.
-With New Age input
