Atiur for more EPZs, SEZs

FE Team | Published: January 14, 2015 00:00:00 | Updated: November 30, 2026 06:01:00

Bangladesh Bank (BB) Governor Dr Atiur Rahman has suggested establishing more export processing zones (EPZs) and special economic zones (SEZs) to promote the country's export.
Listing the central bank's initiatives and supports to expediting export growth, the governor said establishing more EPZs and SEZs should be given priority for gaining benefits from trade facilitation, reports BSS.
He was speaking at the 4th Executive Development seminar at the BB headquarters in the city Tuesday. Bangladesh Bank Training Academy organised the seminar on 'Post-Bali Developments in the WTO: Addressing the Emerging Challenges to Safeguard Bangladesh's Interests'.
Executive Director of Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) Prof Mustafizur Rahman, BBTA Executive Director (in charge) Md Golam Mostofa and BB Deputy Governor SK Sur Chowdhury also spoke on the issue.
The governor said BB recently increased the size of the Export Development Fund (EDF) from $1.2 billion to $1.5 billion to help promote exports when the country's EPZs made remarkable growth both in investment (22.5 per cent) and export (13.8 per cent) in immediate past financial year 2013-14.
Dr Rahman also referred to the government reform policy including substantial reduction and rationalisation of tariffs, removal of quantitative restrictions, shift from multiple to unified exchange rate regime, convertible current account, and an outward oriented trade policy regime.
"With these policy reforms, Bangladesh has become more globally integrated over time with the trade-GDP ratio rising from 18 per cent in 1990 to around 47 per cent in 2014," he said, noting that the country's export grew by 12.0 per cent in FY14.
The governor, however, pointed out that market expansion and product diversification should be addressed with effective measures to achieve the targeted export of $33.2 billion for the current FY 2014-15.
In this connection, the governor also referred to the Ninth Ministerial Conference of World Trade Organisation (WTO) and said this Conference was eventually able to deliver the Bali Package containing crucial issues of Doha Round negotiations.
He said the Bali Package consists of three pillars: Development issues, trade facilitation and agricultural issues where the development issues consist of four LDC issues: Duty-free and quota free (DFQF) access, rules of origin, operationalisation of services waiver for LDCs, and monitoring mechanism.
"The most important issue for Bangladesh is the DFQF market access," he said and noted that almost all the developed countries except the United States, the largest export market for Bangladesh, have provided such market access to LDCs.