ITO Naoki, Ambassador of Japan to Bangladesh, Ms. Sharifa Khan, Secretary, Economic Relations Division, Ministry of Finance signed the Exchange of Notes on the Japanese Grant aid titled “the Project for Human Resource Development Scholarship (JDS)”（up to JPY 476 million, about USD 3 million）.
Based on this agreement between the two counties, Mr. ICHIGUCHI Tomohide, Chief Representative of the JICA Bangladesh Office, and Ms. Sharifa Khan signed a relevant Grant Agreement.
The development of human resources is essential for the future sustainable development of Bangladesh. In this regard, I would like to emphasize that JDS has been playing and will play a vital role in the empowerment of civil service for the nation’s development.”, said Ambassador ITO at the signing ceremony.
Since its inception in 2002, 477 Bangladeshi officials as master’s degree students and 12 officials as doctoral degree students have studied in Japan under the JDS scheme. Given the importance of the country, the annual number of Bangladesh JDS awardees have been increased significantly during the past few years. As of 2021, Bangladesh is ranked as the third biggest among the 19 JDS participant countries.
This year, 33 new JDS fellows have been dispatched to eight universities (Tsukuba, Kobe, Hiroshima, Yamaguchi, Keio, Meiji, Rikkyo, and the International University of Japan.