Country’s trade policy needs action plan on NTMs

The country should have an action plan under its trade policy to deal with the Non-Tariff Measures (NTMs) as well as Non-Tariff Barriers (NTBs), which are increasingly getting prominence in global trade.

Dr Selim Raihan, an economics professor at the University of Dhaka, made the suggestion in his article published on Thinking Aloud, a monthly newsletter of South Asian Network on Economic Modelling (SANEM).

He was of the view that many of the problems of the so-called NTMs and NTBs originate at home rather than in the export destination countries due to weak infrastructure, lack of human resources and various procedural obstacles.

“The action plan should help build the country's capacity in this endeavour,” he added.

NTMs are generally a set of rules and regulations or legitimate policy instruments and sometimes used to protect the health of people and the environment of a country while discriminatory and trade protectionist applications of any NTM turned it into a NTB.

Dr Raihan, also executive director of SANEM, argued that there are emerging challenges and complexities in the global trading regime, which call for an overhauling of the conventional thinking in the trade policy regime in Bangladesh.

In the article he suggested four critical issues, including the action plan for NTMs, to be considered in this overhauling process.

He also suggested the continuation of the effort for further tariff liberalisation in Bangladesh.

The trade expert added that the persuasion of a pro-active trade policy is critical to effectively engage with multilateral, regional and bilateral trading arrangements.

Dr Raihan stressed on taking an initiative for the participation in the prospective mega-trading blocs.

He observed that the country’s effective integration with the global and regional value chains also requires addressing of the policy-induced and supply-side constraints.