Dhaka said on Tuesday that Bangladesh and Pakistan have started direct government-to-government trade after decades of troubled relations with imports of 50.000 tonnes of rice. The two countries have witnessed a thaw in ties after the ousting of premier Sheikh Hasina. Long-time Bangladeshi prime minister Sheikh Hasina was in an August 2024 revolution, fleeing by helicopter to her old ally India, where she has defied extradition to face charges of crimes against humanity.
Relations between India and Bangladesh’s new government have been frosty since then, allowing Dhaka to slowly rebuild Direct private trade between the countries, which restarted in November 2024, when a container ship sailed from Pakistan’s Karachi to Bangladesh Chittagong. It was the first cargo ship in decades to sail directly between the countries. “For the first time, we are importing 50,000 tons of rice from Pakistan, and it is the
first government-to-government deal between the two countries,” Ziauddin Ahmed, a senior official at the
ministry in Dhaka, said on Tuesday.
Bangladesh’s Directorate General of Food signed a memorandum of understanding with the state-owned Trading Corporation of Pakistan (TCP) in January for rice ports. Ahmed said trade with Pakistan offers a new avenue of sourcing and competitive pricing, with state authorities in recent years importing the staples from India, Thailand, and Vietnam. Imports are critical to low-lying Bangladesh, a nation that is among the world’s most vulnerable to climate change, with large areas made up of deltas where the Ganges and
the Brahmaputra rivers wind towards the sea.
The country of 170 million is particularly at risk of flooding and cyclone disasters that only stand to accelerate as the planet keeps warming. Private Bangladeshi companies have imported Pakistani rice for years, but Pakistani goods previously had to be off-loaded onto feeder vessels in Sri Lanka, Malaysia, or Singapore before traveling on.