Nepal requests Bangladesh to hold postponed meeting

Kathmandu February 7- Nepal has requested Bangladesh to hold the commerce secretary-level meeting, which was postponed after Nepal notified the Bangladeshi side about its inability to manage time due to ongoing crises.

The meeting originally scheduled for mid-October 2015 in Dhaka. The two sides are expected to sign an agreement on providing easier market access to each other’s products and remove barriers to trade. 

As per an understanding reached earlier, Bangladesh will provide duty-free access to 108 Nepali products—most of which are agriculture-related—while Nepal will provide preferential treatment to 50 Bangladeshi goods.

Nepal has forwarded two draft memoranda of understanding (MoU) on Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) and Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) Measures. Under the MoU, the two sides will give recognition to quality certificates of each others’ products. The TBT-related MoU deals with quality certificates of manufactured products, while MoU on SPS deals with quality of agriculture products. 

With Bangladesh providing duty-free access to Nepali products, it had sought reciprocal measures from Nepal during the last joint secretary-level meeting held in Kathmandu in April, 2015. But Nepal has asked the Bangladeshi side to implement previously-pledged concessions first. 
 

Nepal is also considering offering duty-free access to certain Bangladeshi products in line with the South Asia Free Trade Area Agreement (SAFTA) within 2016. Ministry officials said it plans to sign an agreement with Bangladesh after settling pending issues at the joint secretary-level meeting.