RMG Export To India To Rse 'soon' .

Readymade garment export is likely to get a boost as New Delhi is actively considering allowing duty and quota-free access of 61 products to India.

About 50 of the 61 products are RMG-related goods.

"We will have more trade cooperation with India in the coming days and the duty- and quota-free access of 61 products are expected to be announced soon," commerce minister M Faruk Khan told the bdnews24.com on Sunday.

He did not confirm whether the announcement will come during the visit of Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh visit to Dhaka in early September.
Manmohan is slated to announce a slew of unilateral concessions, including greater trade access.

India has increased the duty-free quota of RMG products to 10 million from eight million effective from this year and Bangladesh wants unfettered access of RMG and other products, Faruk said.

India sells $3.5-billion worth of goods annually to Bangladesh but imports products worth a mere half a billion dollars.

India has been mulling over Bangladesh's demand to import 61 products, mostly in the textile and readymade garments sectors, duty-free or at concessional rates.

However, tough lobbying against such sops by domestic textile mills, primarily in the Tirupur-Coimbatore-Salem-Erode belt, has held up the decision, the Kolkata-based Telegraph newspaper reported early this month.

The South Indian textile industry employing millions of workers enjoys the support of the DMK and AIADMK parties in their lobbying against giving more trade sops to competitors in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.

Both Sri Lanka and Bangladesh enjoy a duty-free quota of garment exports to India and are also allowed to import cotton yarn without paying any duty.

K. Selvaraju, general-secretary of The Southern India Mills' Association, was quoted as saying by the Indian daily: "If they allow more duty-free access, it will seriously affect us. We are already losing a lot of market share to Bangladesh."

BORDER HAAT

Bangladesh and India are going to open border haats in Sunamganj in Kurigram on Sept 23, said the commerce minister.

"It will create an opportunity to expand cooperation between the countries," he said.

"We are engaged in intense negotiation with India to have more trade facilities to reduce the trade gap," he added.

Source : bdnews24.com