Economic Reporter :
Leaders of Dhaka Chamber of Commerce and Industry (DCCI) have emphasised on strong economic ties among south and southeast countries to create business opportunities and to reduce trade gap among the countries.
They put the emphasis while addressing a two-day long CWBTA Eastern India Trade Summit 2019 held at Kolkata in India recently to help explore new trade opportunities and build closer partnership with neighbouring countries. Entrepreneurs from India, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal and Thailand took part in the summit. Industries Minister of West Bengal Dr Amit Mitra inaugurated the summit.
DCCI’s Vice President Imran Ahmed led the DCCI trade team in Kolkata. Directors of DCCI Hossain A Sikder, Engr Md Al Amin, Mohammad Bashiruddin, Deen Mohammad, former Senior Vice President Alhaj Abdus Salam and former Vice President Md Alauddin Malik, among others, were in the business delegation.
In the opening ceremony, Imran Ahmed said that Bangladesh could serve as a link between South and Southeast Asia and desires to deepen its economic ties with India, Bhutan, Nepal and Thailand.
He also said the bilateral trade and investment is growing robustly with India as the bilateral trade between Bangladesh and India has reached to US$9.49 billion.
Despite improved bilateral trade, export from Bangladesh to India was insignificant contributing only 9.19 percent of the bilateral trade, widening enormous trade gap, he added.
Imran further said a win-win framework shall be designed with the involvement of business and concerned stakeholder of both the nations to increase the Bangladeshi export to Indian market by removing tariff and non-tariff barriers.
Urging the investors from India, Bhutan, Nepal and Thailand to invest here, he said that Bangladesh has taken an initiative of developing 100 economic zones and special economic zones under public private partnership (PPP) model and under private sector.
Sushil Poddar, President of CWBTA said, “The regional trade in eastern India has tremendous potential and can easily be doubled in revenue terms over the next few years. We aim to make Kolkata the hub for expanding bilateral trade with the regional countries and beyond.”
The summit aimed for cooperation among neighboring countries which would pave the way for bringing trading communities together from both sides of border for strengthening regional cross border trade volume.
