Bangladesh is expected to graduate from the least developed country (LDC) to a developing nation by 2026, following which it would lose duty-free market access, which many feel will have adverse impacts on its garment exports.
Keeping in mind the fallouts of the LDC graduation, experts and business leaders have maintained that instead of aggressively pursuing duty-free market access in European and other countries, Bangladesh Government should focus on signing bilateral or regional trade agreements to address the post-graduation challenges even as they added these could be the future for Bangladesh.
As per media reports, the observations were made by the business leaders and the experts while participating in a recent roundtable held in capital Dhaka.
Participating in the discussion, the head of prosperity and economic growth team of British High Commission, Mahesh Mishra, reportedly, stated that Bangladesh should not focus on only duty-free market access and added that the country has a lot to offer the world, even as Research Director of the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) Khondaker Golam Moazzem, on his part maintained that preparation was important to face the challenges of graduation and it should come from the Government institutions and the private sector, while adding, “…Generalised Scheme of Preferences (GSP) is not a concern for Bangladesh to grow but the reform in policies, regulations and institutions are critically important…”