Dhaka and Washington are set to hold a bilateral meeting in the capital in early November to boost bilateral trade and investment under the Trade and Investment Cooperation Framework Agreement the two countries inked nearly three years back. Duty-free and quota-free access of Bangladeshi products to the US market and restoration of generalised system of preferences, revoked in July 2013 on the grounds of poor labour rights and substandard factory conditions, will be the major priorities from Bangladesh side at the meeting, said commerce ministry’s additional secretary Subhashish Basu. ‘The meeting (Ticfa) will be held in the first week of November. Our prime agenda at the meeting is restoration of GSP facility in the US market,’ Basu, also director general of WTO cell, ministry of commerce, told New Age on Tuesday. ‘Other issues relating to trade and investment involving the interests of Dhaka and Washington may come up at the bilateral trade talks,’ he said. Commerce ministry officials said the US trade representative’s office early this month proposed to hold the meeting between October 16 and October 30, which they later deferred to first week of November. The exact date for the meeting is expected to be finalised by next week, a senior official said. The much-talked about Ticfa was signed in November 2013 following about decade-long negotiations between the two countries. On US interests at the upcoming third meeting, a top commerce ministry official said that those would be conveyed by the US side next month. He, however, hinted that issues like human rights situation, labour rights, lifting the compulsion of fumigation of imported US cotton and stringent import policy on diabetes drug, implementation of intellectual property rights and formation of a women economic empowerment committee and a labour affairs committee might be among the US priorities at the meeting. The United States is the single largest export market for Bangladeshi products. The GSP used to bring negligible benefits to Bangladesh in terms of export earnings, as only 5 per cent of the country’s exports to the US market were covered by the zero-duty facility under it. The scheme is, however, tantamount to country’s image, commerce ministry officials believe.
