Bangladesh will focus on four key issues at the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) ninth minister-level meeting of Least Developed Countries (LDC).
“We’ll seek duty and quota-free access for goods from the LDC countries into the markets of the developed and developing countries,” Commerce Secretary Mahbub Ahmed told bdnews24.com on Saturday night before leaving for the summit in Indonesia.
Trade liberalisation agreement, discount in service sector trade and rules of origin are the three other key issues likely to dominate the three-day summit starting on Dec 3.
Mahbub Ahmed is leading a 17-strong Bangladesh delegation.
Commerce Minister GM Quader was expected to lead the delegation, but is stuck with the impending elections.
Discussions ahead of the summit at WTO’s Geneva headquarters failed to reach an agreement over the ‘Bali Package’.
The Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) will organise a dialogue over international trade at Bali on the sidelines of the summit.
Ministers of the LDC countries will meet a day before the summit starts.
Bangladesh has been trying for long to secure quota-free access of its readymade garment products into the US market.
Secretary Mahbub said this, too, would be discussed.
He said trade facilitation, development packages for agriculture and the LDC countries would mainly figure at the summit.
“The packages have four issues — duty and quota-free access, discount on trade sector for LDC countries, rules of origin and the cotton issues,” he said.
Bangladesh will be benefitted once the trade liberalisation agreement was cleared.
Duty-free access
The 2005 Hong Kong WTO summit had decided that the developed countries would provide duty-free access for goods from LDC countries.
Countries that would not be able to provide this access to all the products would give this facility to at least give 97 percent of the products.
However, the decision is yet to be implemented but that is what Bangladesh will pitch for .
The US has been providing quota-free access to goods from the African countries under its own law.
“It (the US) will have to take a political decision to give Bangladesh this facility under the current situation,” said Mahbub Ahmed.
The US had scrapped preferential GSP access of Bangladesh goods into its market in June after the Rana Plaza collapse that had killed over 1,100 people in April this year.
Trade liberalisation agreement
Negotiation has been going on for a long time to sign an agreement on trade liberalisation under the WTO. The agreement is expected to be signed during this summit.
The agreement aims at installing a modernised system that would substantially cut down time and cost of trade.
A consensus could not be arrived at during the discussions at Geneva.
Discount in services sector
The 2011 minister-level meeting at Geneva decided on the LDC Service Waiver after lengthy discussions.
It had been decided that the services sectors of the LDC countries are supposed to be prioritised by the developed nations. But, like many other decisions, it is yet to be implemented.
The Commerce Secretary said the LDC countries including Bangladesh would pitch strongly for the facility.
Rules of Origin
It is a set of conditions over the source of raw materials of export goods under preferential trade agreements.
Secretary Mahbub said it becomes difficult to fulfil conditions of the rules of origin if the terms are not easy and flexible.
As a result the quota-free access scheme becomes literally meaningless, he said.
He said a decision to make the Rules of Origin easy, transperant and flexible is expected to be endorsed at Bali.
Source: bdnews24
