16-member team formed to attend WTO ministerial meet

FE Report The government has formed a 16-member Bangladesh delegation to attend the upcoming 8th World Trade Organisation (WTO) Ministerial Conference, scheduled to be held in Geneva from December 15 to 17 this year. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina approved the list of the delegation last week. Commerce Minister Faruk Khan has been made the leader of the delegation. Nine representatives from the private sector have been included in the team. The experts and business leaders included in the delegation would bear their necessary expenses themselves, a senior commerce ministry official said. The delegation members are Commerce Minister Faruk Khan, Muhammad Abdul Hannan, ambassador at Bangladesh Permanent Mission in Geneva, Switzerland, Amitava Chakraborty, director general of WTO Cell at the Ministry of Commerce (MoC), Mustafizur Rahman, executive director of Centre for Policy Dialogue, Mahbubur Rahman, president of ICC-Bangladesh, AK Azad, president of FBCCI, Annisul Huq, president of SAARC Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Asif Ibrahim, president of DCCI, Md Shafiul Islam(Mohiuddin), president of BGMEA, Jahangir Alamin, president of BTMA, A.H. Aslam Sunny, vice president(Finance) of BKMEA, Arshad Jamal, director of BGMEA, Mostafa Abid Khan, joint chief of Bangladesh Tariff Commission, Sharifa Khan, director of WTO Cell at the MoC, Nesar Ahmed, director of WTO Cell at the MoC and Bijoy Bhattacharjee, economic minister at the Permanent Mission of Bangladesh in Geneva. Officials at the MoC said concluding the Doha Round would be the prime agenda of the next WTO ministerial conference. As the leader of LDC (Least Developed Countries) Group in WTO, Bangladesh would focus on implementation of the Hong Kong Ministerial decision relating to duty-free and quota-free market access for products originating from LDCs with simplified rules of origin.