Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina will visit India in October first week to discuss bilateral issues, including the ones related to common rivers, to take the growing relations between Bangladesh and India forward.

Indian External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar will visit Bangladesh this month, most likely on August 20-21, when the date and agenda of Sheikh Hasina's India visit will be finalised.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina will attend India Economic Summit of the World Economic Forum with the theme 'Innovating for India: Strengthening South Asia, Impacting the World' to be held in New Delhi on October 3-4, a diplomatic source told UNB.

She is expected to leave Dhaka for New Delhi on October 2 and likely to hold the bilateral meeting with her Indian counterpart Narendra Modi after the Economic Summit on October 5. Hasina and Modi will co-chair the Economic Summit which will be attended by dignitaries from around the world.

Hosted in collaboration with the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), the meeting will build on its more than three decades of success and will have a special focus on promoting deeper collaboration between South Asia and ASEAN to leverage their distinctive demographic and digital dividends to boost global growth and enhance collective future.

Key leaders from governments, the private sectors, academia and civil society will address strategic issues of regional significance under four thematic pillars - the New Geopolitical Reality - Geopolitical shifts and the complexity of our global system, the new Social System - Inequality, inclusive growth, health and nutrition, the new Ecological System - Environment, pollution and climate change and the new Technological System - The Fourth Industrial Revolution, science, innovation and entrepreneurship.

Asked about possible discussion on the long-pending Teesta water-sharing issue, Foreign Minister Dr AK Abdul Momen said, "I can't tell you exactly." He, however, hinted that there can be discussions on the 54 common rivers as Teesta seems not to be in the hand of Indian central government.

Dr Momen termed India the biggest democratic country and a big neighbour of Bangladesh, and recalled that the Indian side, when he visited there, accepted him with much respect.

India is a leading development partner of Bangladesh and it has extended concessional lines of credit totalling around the US $ 8 billion.

Dr Momen said he will discuss the LOC projects, expenditures and barriers to implementation of those projects, if any, and identify reasons to expedite the implementation process with his Indian counterpart before Prime Minister's New Delhi visit.

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