Businesses to take up entre-pot trade,

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FE Report Business leaders are poised to take up entre-pot trade and re-export issues with the authorities concerned to help boost bilateral trade with India, especially its north-eastern states, some business leaders said on Sunday. A decision to utilise the scope for business activities under the provisions of Bangladesh's import policy which are still technically operational, was reached on the sidelines of a seminar, jointly organised by International Chamber of Commerce, Bangladesh (ICC-B) and The Daily Star 'Trans-shipment or transit to India', held in the city on the same day. The arrangements are largely considered as ideal opportunities by the local businesses to facilitate transporting goods to, and from, the north-eastern states of India via Bangladesh, before implementation of a full-fledged transit on a regular basis to India after the fixation of transit fees or charges and readying of the massive infrastructural support facilities for the purpose. These will create a scope for both India and Bangladesh to go along the provisions of the import policy of 2003 which were incorporated also in the same policy in 2007, of Bangladesh, as an alternative to transit, they said. In a report on this subject published in the Financial Express on October 29 last, the afore-mentioned arrangements were inadvertently mentioned as being part of the provisions under the export policy of Bangladesh, in place of import policy. "The same mechanism can still be tried for the time being until India is given full-fledged land transit facility," said a former leader of the Dhaka Chamber of Commerce and Industry. If such an approach of bilateral trade based on entre-pot trade and re-export could be taken earlier, it would have been better for both India and Bangladesh, so observed a number of participants in the Sunday's conference. The government of India consented to giving permission to one Bangladeshi export-import firm to do business under entre-pot trade and re-export arrangements as far back as in November, 2007. The Indian state government authorities in Tripura and Assam also cleared the deal then.