The bilateral trade between Bangladesh and Canada has grown tremendously over the last ten years as both the countries are focused on developing trade and investment cooperation, official sources said.
The value of bilateral trade between the two countries has more than tripled from $447 million to $1.7 billion by this time and the balance of trade has always been in favour of Bangladesh, according to an official figure.
Bangladesh exported goods worth $1.7 billion to Canada in the fiscal year 2012-13 and imported goods worth $616.80 million from the North American country. The value of Bangladesh’s merchandise export to Canada was $993.66 in the fiscal 2011-12 and it imported goods worth $440.70 million from the latter country.
“Bangladesh and China has been maintaining a good bilateral trade relations, and the import and export business of the two countries was seen growing enormously in the recent years,” Subhasish Bose, Vice-Chairman of Export Promotion Bureau (EPB) told The New Nation yesterday.
He added: The bilateral trade between Bangladesh and Canada has tripled during the last ten years, showing a bright prospect for further boosting the trade and investment between the two countries.
According to EPB, Bangladesh’s major export items to Canada are garments, home textile, tents, frozen fish, cap, ceramic tableware, jute goods, terry towel, handicrafts, footwear etc. Besides, the major import items from Canada into Bangladesh are live animals, animal products, vegetable products, plastic and rubber articles, pulp of wood, textile and textile articles, base metal, articles of stone, vehicles and aircrafts.
Subhasish Bose mentioned that Canada has provided duty-free and quota-free market access of Bangladeshi garments to its market from January 2003, creating much opportunity to boost the two-way trade between the two countries.
“The gesture of providing the trade preference given by the Canadian Government not only helped increasing our export to the country but also reduced poverty and promote investment and development, ” he added.
When asked, the EPB boss said, his organization has taken a number of initiatives to further increase the export volume to the country.
In order to familiarize our products and to explore our market in Canada, the EPB in cooperation with Bangladesh High Commission in Ottawa was regularly organizing single country trade fairs, with participation of reputed Bangladeshi manufacturers. Besides, we are perusing to the Canadian Government for extending cooperation in the field of establishing joint venture, technology transfer and buy back arrangement for jute, leather, light engineering and agro-processing industries and exchange of trade and investment delegation to promote export trade to the country, he added.
He further said, Bangladesh has also sought Canadian investment in various field including telecom, IT, food processing, textile and power sector in order to increase trade and investment between the two countries.
