Strengthen capacities to participate effectively in multilateral, regional and bilateral trade negotiations is an ardent need to maximize the use of trade agreements to achieve development outcomes, said speakers addressing a webinar on Sunday.
They opined that the government agencies, political parties, private sector, academia, key policymakers, including parliamentarians must have to involve in the process otherwise, trade negotiation will become either impossible or implementation of the outcome of it will not be possible.
The Institute of Chartered Accountants of Bangladesh (ICAB) organised the webinar on ‘International Trade Negotiations: Bangladesh perspective.
Fazle Kabir, Governor, Bangladesh Bank joined the webinar as the Chief Guest while Md. Afzal Hossain, Secretary to the government & Chairman, Bangladesh Trade and Tariff Commission joined as a special guest.
Bangladesh has been pursuing some BIMSTEC, APTA, and few bilateral FTAs through which it is stressing on creating better market access for goods, particularly duty-free & quota-free market access, preferential market access in services where Bangladesh has much potentials, elimination of non-tariff barriers (NTBs) –they said.
Md. Shahadat Hossain FCA, President of ICAB delivered the address of welcome while Shubhashish Bose, Chief Executive Officer of ICAB & Former Senior Secretary, Ministry of Commerce, presented the keynote paper in the webinar.
Dr. Zaidi Sattar, Chairman, Policy Research Institute of Bangladesh (PRI), Noor Md. Mahbubul Haq, Additional Secretary (FTA), FTA Wing, Ministry of Commerce, GoB and Md. Humayun Kabir FCA, Member Council and Past President-ICAB & Chief Executive, Shinepukur Ceramics Ltd joined the webinar as panel speakers.
ICAB President Md. Shahadat Hossain FCA said, currently, Bangladesh has been pursuing some Regional Trade Agreement (RTA) negotiations like BIMSTEC, APTA, and a few bilateral FTAs also.
In these negotiations Bangladesh is always stressing on creating better market access for goods, particularly duty-free & quota-free market access, preferential market access in services where Bangladesh has many potentials, elimination of non-tariff barriers (NTBs), etc, he added.
Bangladesh has adopted the policy of executing Bilateral Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) and Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs) and also signed a bilateral PTA with Bhutan in 2020 and similar initiatives have already been taken for signing agreements with 11 other countries, he informed and added that there is an initiative to conduct a joint feasibility study on the proposed Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement between Bangladesh and India
Hossain said the country is in a rapid growth trajectory with GNI per Capita US$ 1,827. Thanks to the visionary and targeted policy of the present government. It is undeniable that international support measures in the forms of preferential market access and WTO's special and differential treatment for LDCs have made a significant contribution to this remarkable achievement, he further said.