The New Nation - Internet Edition

Staff Reporter

Speakers at a seminar yesterday underscored the need for formulating a pro-poor trade policy and capacity building for negotiating trade agreement with different international trade bodies with a view to ensuring the greater welfare of the marginalised people and enhancing the national economic growth.

Development of the country mostly depends on the reduction of poverty and it is essential for Bangladesh to formulate a pro-poor trade strategy while striking trade deal with the regional and international trade bodies, they said.

They also underscored the need for close public- private partnership and involvement of experts in different fields and streamlining the old dated laws for formulating trade strategies.

They were speaking at the seminar on " Negotiating Trade Agreements: How to Make it Pro-Poor " organised by the Development Research Network (D.Net) at the BRAC Inn auditorium.

Prof Mustafizur Rahman, Vice- Chairperson, D. Net and Executive Director of the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) made welcome address while Dr Shah Md Ahsan Habib, Associate Professor of BIBM and Head, Research and Programme of D. Net presented the keynote paper.

It was also addressed among others by Sohel Ahmed Choudhury, former secretary, Ministry of Commerce and Chairman of Janata Bank Ltd, Muhammad Zamir, former Secretary, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Annisul Huq, President of FBCCI, Manzur Ahmed, Advisor of FBCCI, Dr Toufic Ahmad Choudhury, Chairperson, D. Net, Dr Mostafa Abid Khan, former Deputy Chief, Bangladesh Tariff Commission and fellow researcher of BFTI, Dr Wazedul Islam Khan, General Secretary of Bangladesh Trade Union Kendra, Meghna Guhathakurta, Executive Director of Research Initiative Bangladesh and Mohammad Fazlul Haque, Chairperson of Jatiya Tarun Sangha.

Prof Mustafizur Rahman suggested building up resource persons by giving training and courses in the universities.

"We could not avail the export opportunities in European markets on different items despite zero traffic facilities due to poor negotiation capacity," he said.

He emphasised on imparting proper training to the persons involved in this field for building negotiating capacity.

Annisul Huq said it was important for creating sufficient number of resourceful persons for successfully negotiation on international trade issues.

The seminar took a charter of demands that include strong coordination among different ministries, negotiators and domestic working groups for understanding the trade issues and Bangladesh, as a Least Developed Country (LDC), needs strong local and international civil society organisation supports to improve the livelihood of the poor by protecting food issues, agriculture market access and domestic support to the farmers.