The commerce ministry is set to send a team to the US to further argue its case for reinstatement of generalised system of preferences (GSP) to the American market.
The team will leave in the last week of September, said Hedayetullah Al Mamoon, senior secretary to the commerce ministry.
The main task for the team would be to urge the United States Trade Representative (USTR), the chief trade negotiation body of the American government, to review the progress report of Bangladesh Action Plan once again, he said.
The USTR left out Bangladesh from the list of 122 nations for whom US President Barack Obama on July 29 reauthorised the GSP — the US’s biggest scheme for the world’s poor nations.
The reason for the exclusion was Bangladesh’s failure to fulfil all of the 16 conditions the US had laid out when it revoked the trade privilege two years ago on grounds of poor workplace safety and labour rights.
The country has made “tremendous progress” with the 16-point action plan laid out by the USTR after the twin industrial disasters of Tazreen Fashions fire and Rana Plaza building collapse, according to Mamoon.
Among the major reforms the country carried out were the amendment to the labour law to allow full freedom of association by the workers and completion of inspection of 3,669 factories.
Although delayed, the labour and employment ministry hired additional 200 factory inspectors, as per the conditions set by the US. It allowed registration of more than 350 trade unions and opened a publicly accessible database of the garment sector.
The government also arranged training programmes for industrial police as per the conditions. “So, we have done a lot over the last two years — we will discuss these progresses with the USTR in the upcoming meeting.”
The country has, however, failed to formulate the rules for applying the amended labour law of 2013 and bring changes to the law to allow full freedom of association for factory workers of the export processing zones.
The government also could not arrest the killer of labour leader Aminul Islam, who was tortured and brutally killed in Tangail in April 2012. To date, the government only managed to seize assets of the suspected killer of the trade union organiser. Aminul was also a leader of Bangladesh Centre for Workers Solidarity, which is affiliated with the AFL-CIO, the umbrella American organisation for organised labour.
Mamoon said the government will not submit the progress report again, as it has already done it twice.
The GSP issue could have been discussed in the second meeting of the Trade and Investment Cooperation Forum Agreement (Ticfa) with the US next month, but the government has now decided to pursue it separately.
Bangladesh and the US signed the Ticfa in November 2013 to settle trade-related disputes between the two countries through discussions.
The first Ticfa meeting was held in Dhaka in April last year and according to rules, the second meeting was supposed to be held in April or May in Washington this year. Mamoon said the meeting might take place in September.
The US agreed to renew the privilege for all the countries following requests from its businessmen, who said they were losing $2 million a day due to the suspension of the programme. The new scheme will last until 2017 and make trade benefits retroactive to July 31, 2013, when the whole system was put on pause.
The beneficiaries of the new scheme include South Asian nations such as India, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bhutan and Afghanistan. Bangladesh exported $34.7 million under GSP in 2012.
The top GSP imports from Bangladesh included tobacco, sports equipment, porcelain china and plastic products.
In fiscal 2014-15, Bangladesh exported goods worth $5.58 billion to the US, with 95 percent of them being garment products, which were subjected to 15.61 percent duty. A year earlier, the amount was the same at $5.58 billion.
American businesses imported $19.9 billion worth of products under its GSP programme in 2012, including many inputs that are used in US manufacturing, according to the USTR.
