Bangladesh Embassy in Athens organizes Round Table on Shipping sector cooperation
Athens, 16 July 2022: Bangladesh Embassy in Athens organized today a Round Table on bilateral cooperation in Shipping sector between Bangladesh and Greece in the historic Athens Club as part of celebrating Economic Diplomacy Week.
While opening the discussion, Ambassador Ashud Ahmed highlighted that Bangladesh has emerged as a ship building nation over the last decade and its ship breaking industry has secured top position for consecutive years. Therefore, he opined that the shipping sectors of Bangladesh and Greece can complement each other for mutual benefit through meaningful cooperation. In this regard, he also declared that the Embassy is going to organize a daylong conference on shipping cooperation between Bangladesh and Greece in this year and invited the participants to share their thoughts and ideas on possible areas of cooperation to focus on as preparation of the upcoming seminar/ conference.
Through an elaborate and spontaneous discussions, the participants identified Ship building, ship repairing, ship breaking & recycling, Crew sourcing and maritime training and education as the major areas of cooperation in the shipping sector between Bangladesh and Greece. They opined that building joint ventures in ship building and ship repairing can be helpful in attracting Greek shipowners at large scale towards Bangladesh. In this regard, they also emphasized on importance of promoting Bangladeshi ship building and repairing yards as part of trust building efforts. They added that by capitalizing competitive advantage, Bangladesh can further grow its shipbreaking industry. The participants also expressed satisfaction at the high quality of Bangladeshi crews and indicating the rising demand of suitable crews in shipping sector, mentioned that Bangladesh can be the biggest source of marine crews as the traditional sourcing countries are losing focus. In this regard, the round table agreed that cooperation between the two governments, Greek Ship Owners Association and Bangladeshi recruiting agencies and maritime education institutes of the two countries is imperative to building and enhancing capacity of Bangladeshi marine academies and upgrading the courses and credentials of certificates issued by Bangladeshi institutions.
It may be mentioned that the Round Table was organized as the first one of the series of events to be organized by the Embassy in the coming months to encourage bilateral cooperation in shipping sector between Bangladesh and Greece. The event was attended by relevant stakeholders including ship owners, academicians, crewing agencies, ship breaking brokerage houses, financing associates, shipping agencies, legal & shipping associates, journalists etc.
