India offers to buy 8 mn garment items from Bangladesh
Hindu, India
Dhaka, July. 22 (PTI): India has offered to buy eight million items of garments every year, which are currently in the sensitive list, from Bangladesh to deepen trade ties.
“An MoU to give effect to these imports by India is now awaiting final approval by Bangladesh and I hope it can be signed very soon,” Minister of State for Commerce Jairam Ramesh said here at the launch of the India-Bangladesh Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
This could mean additional annual earnings of 50-70 million dollars for Bangladesh, an official release quoted him as saying.
He also said India was committed to SAFTA, which is proceeding forward on schedule.
“We are firmly committed to it, in spite of the fact that one member continues to deny us most-favoured nation (MFN) status, which is the very basis of WTO and international trade,” he said.
Ramesh said India would advance the schedule for reducing import duties to zero for Least Developed Countries in South Asia to December 2014 from the original date of December 2014.
Besides benefiting Bangladesh, it would benefit Maldives, Bhutan and Nepal. India will also prune the sensitive list for such countries, he said. Beginning January 1, 2014, almost 86 per cent of Bangladesh’s tariff lines will not attract any import duty by India.
“We are taking special care that some items of export interest to Bangladesh are removed from the sensitive list and we aim to complete this by year end,” he said.
