Govt to set up FTA lab to boost trade negotiation skills

The government plans to set up an incubation lab on Free Trade Agreement (FTA) to facilitate effective negotiating before going for any bilateral trade deal.

The lab, the first such initiative in the country, is expected to make available relevant materials for in-depth study on the issue, sources said.

The lab will house FTA documents from various countries, trade journals and magazines, and provide access to the ASYCUDA system of the National Board of Revenue (NBR), among other resources.

When contacted, a senior official at the commerce ministry said that the lab will enable the officials concerned to contribute effectively to protecting the country's interest during the FTA negotiations with other nations.

"The move is mainly to further strengthen our negotiation capacity," he said, adding that the government has already initiated moves to negotiate FTAs with different countries and regional trading blocs as part of a preparation for facing graduation challenges.

At present, Bangladesh is in the process of holding such negotiations with two dozen countries, including Singapore, Japan, China, Indonesia, South Korea, Malaysia, and United Arab Emirates (UAE), according to an official at the FTA wing of the commerce ministry.

Besides, he added, the ministry has taken a move to conduct a feasibility study on African countries, including Nigeria.

Another commerce ministry official said: "We need to sign several regional agreements, including CEPA/ FTAs, before the graduation...,"

After its graduation, he added, Bangladesh would lose various tariff- related facilities that it now enjoys as a least-developed country (LDC).

He explained further that some issues, including revenue losses, are involved with FTAs as all products of both the countries under FTAs would enjoy duty-free facility.

Meanwhile, economists have advocated for signing different types of trade cooperation deals, including FTAs, with different countries to address the challenges likely to emerge when Bangladesh would graduate to the next level.

The trade deals would help Bangladesh boost exports significantly, he added.

Bangladesh signed a PTA (Preferential Trade Agreement) with Bhutan on December 06, 2020, the first of its kind since the country's independence.

However, the country is a member of several multilateral trade blocs.

The two multilateral FTAs that Bangladesh has so far signed are the South Asia Free Trade Area (SAFTA) agreement and the BIMSTEC (Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation) FTA.

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