Faruk was addressing a press briefing at the conference room of the commerce ministry after returning from his three day visit to India.
He said the Border Haat, following signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the two countries during his visit, will start at the latest by first week of October next year to benefit people living on the frontier of both the countries.
"The outcome of our recent visit to India is enormous. India has assured and agreed to exclude 61 items now lying with its Negative list under SAFTA agreement, soon," Faruk told the reporters.
"The exclusion of 61 items, for which we have long been pursuing with the Indian government through bilateral meetings and regional forum, would ensure our duty-free and quota free export of RMG and some other goods to Indian markets," the commerce minister added.
Elaborating, the minister said that currently Bangladesh enjoys duty free market access for RMG up to 8.0 million pieces annually to Indian market. Of the 61 items, 47 products are of different kinds of RMG both from woven and knit categories.
"The facility of duty and quota free access will be provided very soon by Indian government. The export sector of the country, particularly RMG, will be enormously benefited out of the proposed offer," Faruk told the press conference.
Furthermore, Faruk told journalists, importing of about 0.15 million bales of cotton from India, another 0.50 million rice and 0.20 million wheat have been stalled for long due to the export ban imposed on those items by India.
Indian Commerce Minister has assured of lifting the export ban on those items, Faruk told newsmen.
"Besides, India has agreed to increase cotton export to Bangladesh from 0.10 million to 0.11 million per annum, while assurance has been given to increase the yearly export quota of cotton from 0.15 million bales to 0.20 million bales," Faruk said.
Industry people hailed the Indian decision on duty-free and quota free export facility for the country's unlimited RMG export. They said the RMG export to India will shoot upto $2.0 to $3.0 billion per year.
"It's a landmark decision. The export of RMG to India from Bangladesh would increase at least by two to three billion dollars as the demand of low cost RMG is growing in Indian market mainly because the Indians are tilting heavily to high-tech and IT industries abandoning apparel export business," Anwar-ul-Alam Chowdhuiry (Parvez), former President, BGMEA, told the FE.
He, however, said the country now wants to see the materialisation of Indian assurance given in this respect soon.
Other major items falling under 61 items include soybean oil, refined palm oil/palmolein, aviation turbine fuel and fuel oil, natural rubber (smoked sheets), toilet or facial tissue stock, sanitary napkin, paper or paperboard labels of all kinds and silk fabrics, an official said.
Referring to his visit to India, Faruk said they had asked Indian authority to lift provision of inscribing 'Made in Bangladesh' seal on each jute bag exported to India from Bangladesh.
'It's a non-tariff barrier imposed recently by India on jute bags originating from Bangladesh. The Commerce Minister of India Ananda Sharma has agreed to lift the barrier," Faruk told the meeting.
On mutual recognition of standardisation, the Commerce Minister said a delegation of India will visit Bangladesh next month to undertake programme to upgrade the country's standardisation institution -- Bangladesh Standards and Testing Institution (BSTI).
-FE, Tue, 26/10/2010
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