Milon seeks stronger China ties in edu, tech

Education and Primary and Mass Education Minister Dr ANM Ehsanul Haque Milon has called for stronger cooperation with China in education and technology to make the historic friendship between the two countries more sustainable.

He made the remarks while addressing the inaugural session of the Second China-Bangladesh Roundtable on Governance Experience Exchange at a city hotel on Monday.

The roundtable was organised to strengthen bilateral cooperation in education, human resource development, the blue economy and disaster management.

Highlighting Bangladesh’s demographic dividend, Milon said around 65 per cent of the country’s population is young.

Developing this workforce into internationally skilled human resources through technical and vocational education and training (TVET) is a key priority of the government, he said.

Referring to his recent visit to China, the minister said the government had taken initiatives to bring Bangladesh’s technical institutions up to international standards by drawing lessons from China’s close links between industry and academia.

Several memorandums of understanding had been signed with Chinese institutions in this regard, he said.

Milon said the government planned to gradually increase education spending from 2 per cent to 5 per cent of GDP, with a significant portion of the allocation earmarked for improving the quality of technical education.

“Plans are also underway to establish a specialised university focusing on the blue economy to harness the economic potential of the Bay of Bengal,” he said.

Former Home Minister and Patuakhali-1 MP Air Vice Marshal (retd) Altaf Hossain Chowdhury, Dhaka University Vice-Chancellor Professor Dr ABM Obaidul Islam, Chinese Embassy Cultural Counsellor Li Shaopeng and Vice-President of Shanghai Institutes for International Studies Dr Li Kaisheng also spoke at the event.