Officials said, at the bilateral commerce secretary-level meeting to be held in mid-October, Bangladesh will place a fresh list of products seeking duty-free access to Nepal.
They said that so far, against Dhaka's granting of full duty-free access of 108 products to the Himalayan nation, Kathmandu had agreed to offer nominal preferential access to 50 Bangladeshi products.
A senior official of the Ministry of Commerce (MoC) said that they had asked the Bangladesh Tariff Commission to prepare a fresh list of products to place in the next meeting of commerce secretaries seeking duty-free access to Nepal.
Nepalese officials agreed to grant tariff preference to 50 Bangladeshi products; most of these are hardly imported by the country. Of the 50 products, Nepal agreed to reduce duty by 3.0 per cent for products having import-duty more than 15 per cent. It agreed to reduce duty by 5.0 per cent for products that have less than 15 per cent import duty.
Bangladesh and Nepal’s two-way trade is still meagre. Bangladesh exported goods worth US$13.68 million to Nepal and imported goods worth US$21.50 million from the Himalayan nation in the fiscal year 2013-14.
Bangladesh mainly exports woven garments, knitwear, agri-products, footwear, raw jute, and jute goods to Nepal, while it imports vegetable products, animal or vegetable fats and oils, products of chemical or allied industries, plastics and rubber articles, textiles and textile articles, natural or cultured pearls, etc.
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