Strengthen capacity for global trade negotiations: ICAB
Strengthening capacity is a must to participate more effectively in multilateral, regional, and bilateral trade negotiations, bankers, chartered accountants and industry leaders said at a webinar.
They also emphasised the export payment in freely convertible currencies and revision of the current tariff policy.
The Institute of Chartered Accountants of Bangladesh (ICAB) organised the webinar on "International Trade Negotiations: Bangladesh perspective".
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The Bangladesh Bank (BB) Governor Fazle Kabir was present as the chief guest at the webinar.
Fazle Kabir said export payment needs to be executed in freely convertible currency. There is a dilemma between the exporters and importers.
Exporters want cash payments, while importers want to make delayed payments, said the governor.
Hence, there is a mismatch with regards to payments for which a matching arrangement is needed. This is basically done by the third-party financers, which work as the facilitators to materialize the trade deals, he added.
ICAB President Shahadat Hossain FCA said Bangladesh has been pursuing some Regional Trade Agreement (RTA) negotiations like BIMSTEC, APTA, and a few bilateral FTAs also. In these negotiations Bangladesh is always stressing creating better market access for goods, particularly duty-free and quota-free market access, preferential market access in services where Bangladesh has many potentials, elimination of non-tariff barriers (NTBs), etc.
"Managing successfully these complex negotiations totally depends on understanding the changes taking place globally. I believe, ICAB qualified CAs are dynamic and agile to cope with these changes. They proved their efficacy in understanding global business phenomena and survival business policy," he said.
They can contribute to the process of formulating trade policies also, he noted.
Describing the main objectives and process of trade negotiations, the keynote presenter Shubhashish Bose said, "While engaging in international trade negotiations, we need to know the counterparts' interests to have a sense of the middle ground or the point of striking balance, show flexibility by keeping national interests protected and to form alliances among the countries holding the similar kind of interests by taking into consideration the overall political issues, etc."
"Then we would come to a striking balance and reach a deal," he added.
"We are working to develop the environment of the trade negotiation through different policy support," Afzal Hossain, chairman of Bangladesh trade and tariff commission said.
Noor Md Mahbubul Haq, additional secretary (FTA), FTA Wing, Ministry of Commerce said the present tariff policy should be revised. It's only a revenue collection-based policy.
"We need to be more focused on national trade negotiations skills also. A separate negotiation department should be formed for the development of the local industry," he said.
