Hospitality, Food & Wine, Monthly (45)reasons, the discussions for the same
still ongoing and hopefully it will be
implemented soon enough.
Bangladesh is one of Medical
Education destination for a lot of
Nepali students over the years and
probably there are some Bangladeshi
students in Nepal too. Do you think
Nepal and Bangladesh can work
together in other education sector?
We consider ourselves fortunate to
have welcomed Nepali students to
Bangladesh for a long time now. The
feedbacks I receive from the Nepali
students are very positive when they
return. They feel very comfortable there
with the environment, the food, the
cost of living and studying and most
certainly the standards of education. We
have also been welcoming students for
engineering, IT and recently agriculture
as well. For the government medical
colleges, we are offering quotas as we
do for students from all students from 22
countries of which Nepal gets around 30
seats. I would like to say to prospective
students that they need to verify the
quality of the college before they join.
Especially in the private colleges, as is
the case in any other country, the quality
will differ from college to college. The
students must verify properly and not
only depend on consultants or college
websites. We advise the students and
their parents to connect with other
students, or to go and physically verify
the college or to come to the Embassy
where our officers are available to offer
counselling. The students and their
parents are investing a lot of money and
it is a question of their future, so they
must be sure that the college they are
going to is a good one.
Nepal is one of the destinations for
many Bangladeshi tourists and the
number has been steadily increasing
for the last couple of years. But,
we feel that Nepal has not been
able to show case itself properly to
Bangladeshi Travelers. Do you also
think so or there are other reasons
that Nepal is receiving a moderately
happy numbers of tourists?
For us Nepal is a very attractive
destination since the journey takes
about an hour via flight. Nepal has the
mountains, which are a novelty to us
since our terrain is flat. The food and the
culture are similar and Bangladeshi’s
don’t find it difficult when they arrive
here. We feel that Nepal is a very familiar
place for us given all the similarities.
Around 35,000 Bangladeshis visited
Nepal last year but this number can be
increased more. Since Bangladeshis are
travelling more because we have become
a middle income country recently and
we are becoming more affluent and
learning the love of foreign travel. I
think Nepal should do more advertising
or campaigns in Bangladeshi media to
have a wider reach to the people there.
If we have direct bus connectivity it
would help Nepal a lot especially for
the eastern regions of Illam and Dharan.
Easier access by road would definitely
boost tourism.We have been following news about
power trade possibilities between
the two countries and the interest of
Bangladesh in investing Hydropower
plant in Nepal. How long do you
think it will take for this to become
a reality?
It would depend on how fast Nepal
can produce electricity but as of my
understanding at present, Nepal is
importing power itself. Once Nepal
is self-sufficient, then we can look at
trading electricity. It depends on how
fast Nepal can develop its resources.Bangladesh needs more than 40,000
MW by 2030 because we are a very fast
growing economy and to meet demands
of the economy, you need power. We
are in a position to import any amount
of power Nepal can export to us. It all
depends on how fast Nepal can supply.How is Hospitality Industry of
Bangladesh doing in recent year
& Hospitality Education system
developing in Bangladesh? Do you
think that tourism is a sector the two
countries can collaborate in?
Hospitality is an area we can learn
from Nepal. We have beautiful beach
in Cox’s Bazar which happens to be
the longest unbroken sandy sea beach
in the world. We have the Sundarbans,the largest mangrove area in the world
as well. But we have not been able to
promote it as well as Nepal. Many
tour operators were discussing about
developing joint packages, promoting
Nepal and Bangladesh together.Nepal welcome a million tourists last
year but we have not been able to do that,
so this is an area we can certainly learn
from Nepal. The good thing though is
that many people are investing in the
tourism sector and the industry is slowly
growing. Education wise, we have a