Bangladesh has rejected a proposal from India and Pakistan for bending down the sensitive list of trading items to 100 over next five years under the SAFTA (South Asia Free Trade Area) agreement, officials said.
Dhaka rather suggested that every member-sate of SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) lower the number of products on the sensitive list by 20 per cent, on a reciprocal basis, every four years in the third phase.
While submitting the proposal at a meeting of the committee of experts of the regional bloc in Islamabad last week, India and Pakistan also got support from the Maldives. However, other member-states didn't subscribe to the move.
The leader of Bangladesh team, additional secretary of the ministry of commerce Monoj Kumar Roy, told the FE if Bangladesh reduced the number of goods on the sensitive list by 20 per cent every four years, the items would come down to around 400 in 2030.
"On their request we have agreed to try for bringing down the number of products on sensitive list to 450 by 2030," he said.
Presently the restrictive list of Bangladesh contains 887 items for least developed countries (LDCs) and 993 products for non-LDCs in the South Asian trading bloc.
The Afghan sensitive list contains 858 products for both LDCs and non-LDCs, Bhutan has 156 products for both, India 25 products for LDCs and 614 non-LDCs, the Maldives has 154 for both, Nepal 998 for LDCs and 1036 for non-LDCs, Pakistan 936 products for both, and Sri Lanka has 837 products for LDCs and 963 for non-LDCs.
Sources said in the meeting Bangladesh also did not agree with another Indian proposal on plant-site visit in case of finding fault in certificate on rules of origin. They also offered technical support in this connection.
However, the Bangladesh side declined to take technical support, too, from India, saying that the country is capable enough of modernising its database system of exporters for checking certificates on rules of origin under the SAFTA agreement.
The meeting was supposed to finalise the schedule of specific commitments under the SAARC Agreement on Trade in Services (SATIS) to expand cooperation in service and trade and further deepen the integration of the regional economies.
However, none of the members did submit their offer list at the meeting. Thus the issue did not see any progress, officials said. Bangladesh earlier had agreed to open its telecom and tourism sectors for foreign investment in reply to an Indian request to open up a good number of service sectors, they added.
The sectors include accounting, auditing, urban planning, medical and dental services, advertising, electronic media, rail transport, pipeline transport, construction and related engineering services, education.
Eight South Asian nations, under the SAARC, signed the landmark agreement- SATIS- in April 2010 in order to expand cooperation in trade and further deepen the integration of the regional economies. The Agreement entered into force on 29 November 2012 after ratification by all the member-states of the association.
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