Tapan Kanti Ghosh, the Senior Commerce Secretary, recently announced the forthcoming seventh round of meetings under the Trade and Investment Cooperation Forum Agreement (TICFA) to be held in Dhaka. This meeting will address a wide range of trade and investment topics, encompassing customs duties, labor rights, trade unions, and market access, among others.
The Commerce Secretary shared this update while speaking with a group of journalists at his office in the Bangladesh Secretariat in Dhaka.
TICFA, signed on November 25, 2013, between the United States and Bangladesh, established an annual forum dedicated to identifying and addressing barriers hindering the growth of bilateral trade and investment.
During the upcoming meeting, Bangladesh is expected to once again request duty-free market access for its apparel products produced using cotton imported from the United States.
Additionally, the discussion will cover the reinstatement of the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP), which was suspended for Bangladesh in June 2013.
Bangladesh will also seek to streamline the procedures for registering pharmaceutical products and encourage investment from the US International Development Finance Corporation in Bangladesh’s energy sector. Other topics on the agenda include labor rights, trade union registration, current labor practices, labor law reforms (including amendments to the Bangladesh labor act), and labor rights within special economic and export processing zones.
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