WB to help BD boost its regional trade

The World Bank (WB) has come forward to help Bangladesh boost its regional trade and transportation facilities with the neighbouring countries including India, Myanmar, Nepal and Bhutan, officials said Saturday.
The Ministry of Finance (MoF) officials said a mission from the global lender visited Dhaka last week to find out scope for its support to the government for expanding the regional cooperation.
"The World Bank team sat with the relevant ministries to assess the needs of Bangladesh. Then, it is likely to help Bangladesh take some projects for developing infrastructure and trade facilities in a bid to enhance the regional cooperation," Kazi Shofiqul Azam, an additional secretary of the ERD under the MoF told the FE.
He said the WB team had discussed with the Bangladesh Land Port Authority, Customs Department of the National Board of Revenue, Planning Ministry, Foreign Affairs Ministry, Prime Minister's Office, Chittagong Hill Tracts Affairs Ministry and the ERD during its week-long visit.
This initiative of the Bank will be an integrated approach for boosting the regional trade and transportation within these South Asian countries, Mr Azam said.
The WB wants to help improve the capacity of the customs points at the lands, rivers and seaports, transportation facilities including roads, railway and waterways and inter and intra-regional cooperation.
South Asia is one of the world's poorer areas in terms of regional trade. Its neighbouring region, the South-East Asia has emerged as a global leader in boosting their intra-regional trade within a shorter period of time last decade.
It is widely thought that the non-tariff barriers to trade (NTBs) are the main obstacles to intra-regional trade in South Asia. Intra-regional trade in South Asia is merely 5.0 per cent as compared to 58 per cent in the EU, 52 per cent in the NAFTA region, and 26 per cent in the ASEAN zone.
ERD additional secretary Mr Azam said the World Bank has already provided US$5.0 million for conducting a study to find out scope of the trade facilitation and necessary support to improve the infrastructure of Bangladesh.
After the study, the Washington-based lender is expected to come forward with its financial support further for different investment projects to facilitate regional trade and transportation, he said. Earlier, Bangladesh's another development partner-the Asian Development Bank (ADB)-had extended its technical and financial support to enhance the cross-border and regional trade and other cooperation in the South Asian region.
Under the South Asia Sub-regional Economic Cooperation (SASEC) Program, the ADB has facilitated to bring together Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal and Sri Lanka in a project-based partnership to promote regional prosperity by improving cross-border connectivity, facilitating faster and cheaper trade among member countries and strengthening regional economic cooperation.  Since 2001, ADB has invested nearly US$5.6 billion to improve physical infrastructure, support reform processes and build capacity in transport, trade facilitation and energy in South Asia, one of the world's least economically-integrated regions.
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