Govt body starts work to identify trade barriers

A government-formed committee has started working to identify the existing trade barriers at domestic and international levels to address those in the draft Comprehensive Trade Policy (CTP), officials said.
 "The official sub-committee is scrutinising the trade barriers and problems that will be adjusted with the draft CTP for finalising the policy," said a high official concerned.
The draft CTP will be finalised within the next one month, he hoped.
A meeting of the sub-committee was held recently. Amitabh Chakravarty, additional secretary of the Ministry of Commerce (MoC) and director general (DG) of its World Trade Centre (WTO) Cell, presided over the meeting.
In the meeting four working committees were formed to fix work areas on market access and trade agreement, trade in services and investment policy, trade facilitation, removing barriers to trade and behind the border measures.
Each of the committees will submit a report to its respective chief, identifying the trade barriers and providing recommendations.
The committees will submit a comprehensive report to the focal committee, which will submit the final report to the MoC senior secretary.
A meeting will also be held with the stakeholders regarding the draft CTP.
Besides the sub-committee and working committees, another committee is working on other trade-related issues in connection with the draft.
"The CTP aims to achieve an accelerated and sustainable economy through an integrated trade approach that commensurates with the vision of becoming a middle-income country by 2021," a high official told the FE.
It also targets significant trade growth, crucial for raising the gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate to 8 per cent by 2015 and to 10 per cent between 2017 and 2021, as outlined in the perspective plan for a transformed Bangladesh within 2021, he also said.
So, the Core Group (former 'trade policy working group'), established under the MoC supervision, is working to develop the CTP in line with the development objectives of the perspective plan, he added.
The major principles of the CTP are - promotion of diversified, export-led industrialisation, strengthening production network of existing and export-oriented products, increasing the country's international competitiveness, creating favourable market access conditions, and making trade contribution towards poverty reduction by increasing and diversifying exports.
Besides, making the country's trade regime contributable towards sustainable development by ensuring its consistency with the development objectives and existing international trade commitments is another major principle of the policy.
The draft CTP is being prepared under the Bangladesh Trade Policy Support Programme (BTPSP), jointly funded by the European Union (EU) and the Government of Bangladesh. MoC is the implementing authority of the programme.

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