A 30-member trade delegation of Dhaka Chamber of Commerce & Industry (DCCI) attended a two-day CWBTA Eastern India Trade Summit 2019 held in Kolkata on July 15-16 to help explore new trade Opportunities and build closer partnership with neighbouring countries.
Entrepreneurs from India, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal and Thailand took part in the summit, said a DCCI press release yesterday.
DCCI’s Vice President Imran Ahmed led the DCCI trade team in Kolkata.
Directors of DCCI Hossain A Sikder, Engineer Md. Al Amin, Mohammad Bashiruddin, Deen Mohammad, former Senior Vice President Alhaj Abdus Salam, former Vice President Md. Alauddin Malik were in the team.
The summit aimed to interact with the business leaders of partner countries on business opportunities, drawing suggestions for the ease of foreign trade, product basket and conducting informative exchanges. Industries Minister of West Bengal Dr. Amit Mitra inaugurated the summit. There were also a B2B match-making session and Fair at the second day of the event.
In the opening ceremony of the summit, DCCI Vice President Imran Ahmed said that Bangladesh could serve as a link between South and Southeast Asia and desires to deepen its economic ties with India, Bhutan, Nepal and Thailand.
He said the bilateral trade and investment is growing robustly with India adding that the bilateral trade between Bangladesh and India reached to $9.49 billion.
Despite improved bilateral trade, export from Bangladesh to India was insignificant contributing only 9.19 percent of the bilateral trade, widening huge trade gap.
Imran said Bangladesh has taken an initiative of developing some 100 economic zones and special economic zones under the public private partnership (PPP) model and under the private sector.
The DCCI Vice President thus urged the investors from India, Bhutan, Nepal and Thailand to invest in these economic zones.
President of CWBTA Sushil Poddar said, “The regional trade in eastern India has tremendous potentials and can easily be doubled in revenue terms over the next few years. We aim to make Kolkata the hub for expanding bilateral trade with the regional countries and beyond” The summit aimed at forging cooperation among the neighboring countries which would pave the way for bringing trading communities together from both sides of border for strengthening regional cross-border trade volume.