The trade access horizon

We note that from China, Bangladesh had sought duty-and-quota-free access to a total of 129 items out of which 59 items are to receive the preferential treatment from the Chinese market. We also sought the same facility for 109 of our items to South Korea, 89 to India and 124 to Sri Lanka but the countries are yet to respond to our requests. As it is under the Bangkok Agreement, Bangladesh has got zero to 50 per cent duty reductions on 188 items to all the signatory countries. Now, the outpouring of all these statistics conjures up the vision of what an increased responsibility we are taking on our shoulders to expand the basket of our exports.

From another angle, the circumstances seem to be equally compelling for increasing our productivity within an export-led growth strategy. Under the Bangkok Agreement, Bangladesh has, for her part, allowed concessionary duties on several items from the member countries. On the whole, Bangladesh has been most generous in liberalising her trade terms for other countries. In the SAARC region, she was the first to lower her tariff and non-tariff barriers among the member countries. It has to be a two-way traffic. And that means whilst other countries reciprocate our gestures we raise our levels of productivity and export to benefit from freer trade.

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