Cabinet okays officials’ visa exemption proposal with Brazil

The cabinet on Monday endorsed a proposal for visa exemption of the officials and diplomatic passport holders of Bangladesh and Brazil. The approval was given in the regular meeting of the cabinet held at Bangladesh Secretariat with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in the chair.
Briefing reporters after the meeting, cabinet secretary M Musharraf Hossain said the proposal was approved in pursuit of the Article-7 of the “Technical Cooperation Agreement” between Bangladesh and Brazil.
Earlier, Dhaka and Rio de Janeiro agreed in principle to sign an agreement for exemption of visa requirement for officials and diplomats, he said.
The instrument proposed that official and diplomatic passport holders of both the countries could stay for 30 days without a visa in each other countries or use the lands for transit to visit another country.
Musharraf Hossain said the visa exemption agreement would strengthen relations of Bangladesh with the Latin American country Brazil, an emerging economic power and member of transnational economic forum BRICS.
The cabinet also approved a proposal for ratifying the visa exemption pact between Bangladesh and Cambodia for official and diplomatic passport holders.
Dhaka now has visa waiving agreement with 12 countries and discussion is going on with 11 other counties for such agreement, the cabinet secretary added.