Nepal and Belgium signed a Memorandum of Understanding on the establishment of bilateral consultation mechanisms between the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Nepal and Federal Public Service Foreign Affairs, Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation of the Kingdom o f Belgium

According to a press release issued by Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Foreign secretary Shanker Das Bairagi and secretary general of Belgium Dirk Achten signed the agreement on behalf of respective governments.

As per the MoU, Nepal and Belgium will hold consultations in Kathmandu and Brussels or in the margins of international conferences at various levels on a regular basis to review their bilateral relations and cooperation existing between the two countries. They also shared their views on the importance of exchange of high level visits.

According to a press release issued by Nepalese Embassy in Brussels, the two sides while acknowledging huge potentials for enhancing economic collaboration and cooperation between the two countries underlined the need to promote trade, tourism and investment. They also shared views on regional and global issues of mutual concerns and underlined the importance of multilateralism to address global issues facing the international community.

Foreign secretary Shanker Das Bairagi had a meeting with the Director General of the Directorate General of International Cooperation and Development (DGDEVCO) of the Commission Stefano Manservisi at the latter’s office in Brussels.

During the meeting, the overall state of development cooperation between Nepal and European was discussed. In particular, secretary Bairagi and DG Manservisi reviews EU’s support to Nepal‘s development efforts in areas of sustainable rural development, education, health and good governance among others.

They also deliberated on the need of enhancing Nepal-EU cooperation on knowledge generation, trade, investment and tourism. Foreign secretary Bairagi had also a meeting with the Deputy Secretary General for Economic and Global issues of the European External Action Service Christian Loffler at Brussels.