Countries cajoling BD to buy  defence products: MoFA

Countries are getting more interested to sell their defence products to Bangladesh and eager to go for co-development and co-production of defence material.
They express their interest to sell fighter aircraft--manned and unmanned (drones), short-and medium-range missiles, tanks, cannons and battleships.
In line with the idea foreign countries have increased defence dialogue, staff talks, joint training, exercise and high-level exchanges with Bangladesh in the last two years, Foreign Ministry sources said.
"It is remarkable that all three service chiefs have visited several countries last year, the other countries chiefs of army and air force have also visited Bangladesh," the official said.
British High Commi-ssioner to Bangladesh Robert Chatterton Dickson termed 2021 was a "good year" for Bangladesh-UK defence relations, as a Royal Navy ship sailed to Chattogram after 13 years as part of their Carrier
Strike Group deployment (CSG21) to the Indo Pacific region.
"We're looking forward to talks to put this relationship on a more strategic basis," said the High Commissioner.
Bangladesh spent about $4.6 billion on its armed forces in 2020, ranked 11th in military spending among the top 15 nations in the Asia and Oceania region, Sweden-based Stockholm International Peace Research Institute in March 2021announced.
Meanwhile, the Indian Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on November 2021 has expressed hope that India's US$ 500 million line of credit to Bangladesh for defence equipment will spur joint activities not only in acquisition of assets but also in co-development and co-production of defence material.
Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar requested Bangladesh to utilise a line of credit extended by India for purchasing military equipment, in a meeting with his Bangladesh counterpart AK Abdul Momen on August 20 last year in Dhaka.
Not only UK and India, a number of countries that produce military equipment are keen to sell their products and services to Bangladesh including the United States, France, Italy, Turkey, and Belarus among others.
There are proposals made to Bangladesh for selling to it fighter planes, including Rafale of France, F-16 of the USA and Eurofighter Typhoon, a fighter jet jointly produced by the UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain, diplomatic sources said.
Bangladesh Institute of Peace and Security Studies President ANM Muniruzzaman said, 'Defence purchases by Bangladesh have increased recently while the country is keen to diversify its sources of weapons to raise the capabilities of its armed forces.'
Military modernization programme of the Bangladesh Armed Forces began in 2009 and was revised in 2017. It was designed to enhance the capabilities of the three services of the Bangladesh armed forces: the army, the navy and the air force. The Bangladesh government has spent an undisclosed amount of money to upgrade the navy's fleet with different types of naval vessels, including frigates, cutters, corvettes and offshore patrol vessels (OPV).
In January last year, Chittagong Dry Dock Ltd (CDDL) received a contract to build six new OPVs for the Bangladesh Navy.
The United Kingdom was the latest country to propose defence supplies to Bangladesh in the fourth strategic dialogue between the two countries in London on September 9 in 2021.
"As Bangladesh plans to enhance the capabilities of the three services of the Bangladesh armed forces: The army, the navy and the air force with modern equipment, obviously it is a business opportunity for others�.they will knock," security analysts Maj Gen (Retd) Abdur Rashid told the daily Observer.
He said Bangladesh should buy the equipment in cash not through any suppliers' credit or loan amount to avoid any "bad purchase."
Bangladesh procures almost all of its medium-sized and heavy war equipment from foreign countries, it is important for Bangladesh to drastically increase the capacity of its armed forces for securing its borders, both land and maritime, and the airspace in line with the Forces Goal 2030, he observed.
Holding defence dialogues with the militaries of powerful countries is important for Bangladesh as security issues are becoming multidimensional with the inclusion of containing terrorism as well as violent extremism in the agenda, he added.    
French defence minister Florence Parly and Turkish foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu expressed their intents to sell military equipment to Bangladesh during their visits to the country in March 2020 and December 2020 respectively.
France proposed selling Rafale, a twin-jet fighter aircraft, and unmanned combat air vehicles, among other military hardware.
Turkey expressed its intent to engage with Bangladesh in joint production and technology transfer in the areas of defence and other science-based sectors.
Italy, too, expressed its wish to sell to Bangladesh fighter jets, jointly produced with the UK, Germany and Spain, and frigates in February 2020.
The United States expressed its desire to export various military hardware, including Apache helicopters, to Bangladesh.
The US authorities are in negotiations with their Bangladesh counterparts on signing Acquisition and Cross-Servicing Agreement and General Security of Military Information Agreement to facilitate transfer of advanced defence materials to Bangladesh.
China and Russia have been the largest defence hardware suppliers for Bangladesh for several decades.
Bangladesh was the 45th country in the Global Firepower Index 2020, a ranking in terms of the total available active military human resources of a country.