Bangladesh will put strong arguments for receiving duty-free and quota-free (DFQF) trade facilities by next year and will call for an immediate decision at WTO talks beginning Monday in Geneva, reports bdnews24.com.
Delegations of some 153 WTO members are joining the Seventh WTO Ministerial Conference 2009. Bangladesh, as chair of the 39-nation LDC Group, will lead the least developed countries (LDCs) in the talks.
Earlier, on October 14-18, commerce ministers of the 39-nation LDC Group met in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, where they adopted a declaration and work plan, aiming to unify the position of LDCs on world trade issues and give guidance to negotiators ahead of the Geneva meet.
The work plan instructed the senior officials of the LDCs in Geneva to formulate appropriate language on DFQF and finalised LDCs' position on Disproportionate Affected Countries (DAC).
"We discussed the LDCs' possible role in the upcoming WTO Geneva talks," Commerce Minister Faruq Khan told reporters on his return from the meeting.
He expressed the hope that there would not be any disagreement in opinion among the LDC members from Asia and Africa at the Geneva conference.
Based on this work plan, senior LDC officials particularly Tanzania, Zambia, Uganda and Bangladesh prepared language on these two important issues that was circulated before Sunday's meeting.
The LDC commerce ministers met Sunday afternoon, prior to the conference, to review their progress since the Dar-es-Slam meet and future course of actions.
Dhaka to make strong push for duty-free, quota-free trade
FE Team | Published: December 01, 2009 00:00:00 | Updated: February 01, 2018 00:00:00
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