B'desh FM leaves for Delhi tom to attend meet

Dhaka, Aug 6: Bangladesh Foreign Minister M Morshed Khan will leave for India tomorrow to attend a two-day BIMSTEC ministerial meeting in New Delhi on August 8-9, to review the progress of the proposed seven-nation Free Trade Agreement (FTA) after a missed implementation target of July 1.

Mr Khan who is Chairman of the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) will lead Bangladesh to its ninth ministerial meeting. He will also hand over the chair to India at the meeting.

The economic bloc comprising seven South and Southeast Asian countries-- Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Bhutan and Nepal-- would focus on some outstanding issues at the meeting of the foreign ministers.

The Trade Negotiations Committee (TNC) of senior officials and experts had met in Colombo during July 25-29 to review the progress and observed that there were still many issues to resolve before implementing the FTA.

''There's still a long way to go,'' a senior official here told UNI today.

He said the TNC negotiations on the proposed free trade accord on trade in goods began afresh in July after a long stalemate since the first TNC meeting in February this year.

The next meeting of the TNC is scheduled to be held in September, but it is unlikely to set a fresh deadline to implement the FTA as huge tasks still remain to be resolved, he said.

''The political situation in Thailand (the main mover of the bloc) is a major factor. The fate of the economic cooperation would largely depend on the political stability in Thailand,'' said another official.

He said the member states have once exchanged their respective sensitive lists of products to keep them out of the Tariff liberalisation programme (TLP). The member countries are likely to review the lists and again exchange them after further review before the next TNC meeting.

TNC experts at their meeting last month also discussed key trading arrangements such as rules of origin and lists of items to be opened under the fast track of trade liberalisation programme.

Technical experts had discussions on a separate framework of dispute-settlement mechanism.

As for the FTA on trade in goods, the negotiators had agreed to open trade under 'fast track' and 'normal track' of trade liberalisation.

Under the fast track, the members have agreed to bring down tariffs to a range of zero to five per cent by June 2009 for developing countries and by June 2011 for least developed countries.

Under the normal track, however, they will follow a gradual tariff liberalisation programme. The developing countries will have to reduce tariff for each other by June 2010 and with least developed members by 2012.

While the compliance deadline for developing countries is June 30, 2015, for LDC members it is July 2017.

Besides FTA on trade in goods, BIMSTEC members had agreed to kick-start free trade area for service trade and investment from July 2007.

UNI