Even four years ago he was ‘ignorant’ about Bangladesh but after three years in Dhaka, Danish Ambassador Svend Olling believes “maybe I am 10 percent Bangladeshi”.
Speaking to bdnews24.com, he said he felt like a Bangladeshi who “hears foreigners talk ill about Bangladesh and get the urge to defend” it.
“For the rest of the life I’ll be the ambassador of Bangladesh to the rest of the world,” he said before leaving Dhaka.
Olling said he read books, literature, saw movies and asked ‘a thousand questions’ about Bangladesh to learn more than he had known – that the delta country was facing a lot of problems with its huge population, poverty, and frequent cyclones and flooding.
He was amazed by the people and culture of Bangladesh, despite its volatile politics, violence, corruption and building collapse that he said were ‘challenges’ of the country.
Denmark is one of the leading development partners of Bangladesh that currently works in the water, sanitation, agriculture and human rights and development sectors.
The Ambassador said as he was leaving he had some good news for Bangladesh – on June 12, his government decided ‘to have much deeper cooperation’ with Bangladesh almost on all fronts in the next five years.
The development cooperation would be Tk 14 billion, more than the earlier years.
Olling said they would deepen their commercial, political, development cooperation with Bangladesh. New sector –‘green growth’ – would be included in the cooperation initiative.
Under ‘green growth’, he said, they would look at “energy efficiency, climate adaptation, and renewable energies” in the next five years.
They would continue to work and also ‘strengthen’ their commercial activities that he said were ‘two sided’.
“On development-basis cooperation we want Danish companies to come and invest here.
“We encourage them to do joint ventures, transfer knowledge, educate staff at local companies here,” he said, “If they do that in Bangladesh instead of what they typically do in China and other countries we are ready to pay up to 75 percent of the cost for pilot study, training of local staff, and feasibility study to help it happen.”
They had already done 100 such partnerships and in future they would do more, he said and added political cooperation would be ‘interesting’.
“I believe strongly Bangladesh is working actively and positively in many international issues like climate change where Bangladesh is a leading nation.”
He said in the UN when a Bangladeshi representative takes floor, “we can feel in the room, people stop and listen to what Bangladesh says. This is very clear and out of the respect of the quality of negotiators, seriousness of Bangladesh.
“Bangladesh is a clear leader (in climate change)”.
He said Bangladesh was also a ‘very strong’ leader in peacekeeping and also played ‘leadership role’ in many other areas like trade policy, and human rights.
He said as for political cooperation, Denmark and Bangladesh could work together on climate change.
“If I compare what we want to do and what Bangladesh wants to do, it’s almost identical. When Bangladesh and Denmark sit down and write international treaty that is legally binding on combating climate change, we would very quickly agree.”
He said it was an ‘interesting’ alliance.
“If Denmark and Bangladesh work together hand in hand, it sends some very strong signals of legitimacy because we come from different grouping that’s why we have some legitimate voices.”
He said Bangladesh’s ‘excellent’ relations with other South Asian countries left the potentials of it acting as the integrator with the least economically integrated region in the world.
“We see this opportunity. We do want to work with Bangladesh,” he said.
The two-way trade between the two countries is more than Tk 28 billion and the envoy said “every two years it doubles in both countries”.
Olling said “the bilateral interest in economic relations is much more than the bilateral trade”.
“Danish companies have invested here and are producing and exporting to other countries that do not hit the bilateral trade figure.”
He, however, said before making investment in Bangladesh they want to be “absolutely sure the working conditions are acceptable”.
The Danish Ambassador said Rana Plaza issue must be ‘a game changer’ for the industry.
“It’s (Rana plaza collapse) a different game. It’s not something like disaster people talk for a few days. We cannot continue this way. Something must be changed,” he said.
He, however, suggested Bangladesh to diversify its export basket.
“Most interesting, ship (building) is a very fast growing sector,” he said and added that in May his country had imported a ‘passenger ferry’ for the first time.
“It’s a brand new passenger ferry that’s already sailing in the water.” Olling said for branding Bangladesh he had asked them to put a ‘huge’ mark ‘Made in Bangladesh’ at a place where everybody can see it and two weeks later, he said, Bangladesh got a new order.
He termed it a ‘breakthrough’.
The Danish maritime authorities were very sceptical initially. “It’s a risky business, they were not sure (whether Bangladesh can do it). They don’t compromise on safety standards, which is very high. But now they are very happy,” he said. “A very tough inspection” team inspected the vessel before its delivery.
He said he had noticed Bangladesh’s strength in the private sector. “All the companies that come are very surprised to find Bangladesh is completely a different country from what they had thought it to be.
“The private companies that we met have hard-working, ambitious people with ideas we can do business with,” he said.
But violence stood in the way of investments, he added. “It’s violence that is the enemy,” he felt and urged political parties “to deplore and denounce violence”.
He said counting the loss of productivity due to hartals was “only the tip of the iceberg”.
“The real cost is the image of Bangladesh,” he said, and added that it drove away investments that Bangladesh needed to become a middle-income country.
Bangladesh has to be “open, receptive and peaceful” so that foreign investors can come, he said.
He recalled that when he had arrived Bangladesh three years back, the political situation was ‘rather calm’.
But when he is leaving in the election year, the situation is different.
He said people here told him that at things would change in the very last moment.
But, he said, he would leave with a ‘very unsatisfactory feeling’ as he would not be able to see what’s going to happen.
“I feel a bit like in a football game and telling the family, in those terrible five minutes before the final whistle, to get up leave because it is easy to go before the crowd arrives. I feel like that in leaving Bangladesh before the final whist.”
He, however, said he would leave Dhaka with ‘so many good memories’.
“When I land in Copenhagen, its cold, dark, and not many people around, you have a sense of empty streets there is nobody around. You go to the suburb of Copenhagen and it’s very nice, houses very neat, but streets empty, there is nobody, you look down the street as far you can see but there is no sign of life”.
“That sense of being alive, that action, that’s something that I am going to miss because the concentration of life in positive sense is very high here in Bangladesh,” he said, in praise of Bangladeshis’ ‘hospitality’.
“People here treated us with respect, and courtesy.”
Source: Bd news24
