B’desh to seek Lankan duty reduction on 40 products

Bangladesh will seek duty reduction on some specific products to Sri Lanka during the ongoing two-day long joint working group meeting that began in Colombo on Monday, sources said.
An eight-member delegation, headed by an additional secretary of the Ministry of Commerce is taking part in the meeting.
During the first day's meeting, the two countries agreed to work for addressing bottlenecks in two-way export, the sources added.
"There is a huge demand for Bangladeshi products, specially pharmaceuticals, garments, leather and light engineering products in Sri Lanka, but due to high duty structure, our exporters can not do well in the Lankan market," Vice Chairman of Export Promotion Bureau (EPB) Suvashis Bose told the FE before he left for the meeting.
"We will seek duty reduction on some exportable products to Sri Lanka especially under the SAPTA (South Asian  Preferential Trading Arrangement)," he added.
"If we succeed, local exports will gain a significant growth in the years to come and thus the country will be able to come out of negative territory of both-way business," Bose said.
Sri Lanka is the third largest destination of Bangladeshi products in South Asia.
In December 1991, the sixth SAARC summit, held in Colombo, approved establishment of an Inter-Governmental Group (IGG) to reach an agreement to establish the SAPTA by 1997.
Given the consensus within the SAARC, the agreement on SAPTA was signed on April 11, 1993 and put into effect on December 7, 1995 well ahead of the date stipulated by the Colombo Summit.
The agreement reflected the desire of the member-states to promote and sustain mutual trade and economic cooperation within the SAARC region through exchange of concessions.
However, a private sector member of the delegation, preferring anonymity, said though there is a great demand for Bangladeshi products in Sri Lanka, still we face impediments as Colombo has imposed high rate of duty on import of some items like RMG, agro-based products, dry cell battery, utensils, melamine, etc ranging from 40 per cent to 75 per cent.
"We are hopeful that after implementation of the SAPTA, duty will come down. This will ultimately increase volume of our exports to Sri Lanka. We will mainly pursue implementation of the agreements.'   
He also said, in a recent single country Bangladesh trade fair in Sri Lanka, local exporters received confirmed export order worth US$1.6 million and prospective orders worth $5.49 million and many queries.
"It reflects the huge demand for Bangladeshi products in Sri Lanka," he added.
The delegation member, however, informed that during the meeting, Bangladesh would demand duty reduction on 40 products including medicines, automotive battery, dry cell battery, utensils, melamine, tableware, kitchen ware leather goods and food items.

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