Speakers at a training programme urged the government to focus on macroeconomic issues instead of microeconomic ones to reap maximum benefits from the upcoming WTO (World Trade Organisation) talks, scheduled for next April in Geneva.
They said some issues like special and differential treatment, agriculture, non-agricultural market access (NAMA), duty-free market access, and aid for trade and service should be addressed by Bangladesh at the next WTO meeting.
The negotiators' failures to focus on core issues at the recently-held WTO ministerial meeting in Hong Kong are the main reasons behind the country's poor gains from the meet, they observed.
They said as Bangladesh has failed to raise its demands properly at the WTO meeting, now it has to face carefully any discrimination shown by other nations.
The speakers were addressing a training programme titled "Appreciation Course for Journalists on Bangladesh Issues in WTO" in Dhaka on Wednesday. Unnayan Onneshan, an NGO, organised the programme where former commerce secretary Alamgir Faruk Chowdhury presented a brief outline on WTO. A total of 20 journalists participated in the training course.
The speakers also stressed the need for coherence between WTO regulations and donor agencies' conditions to get benefits from the global market.
As per the outcomes of the last WTO ministerial meet, least developed countries (LDCs) will get 97 percent duty-free access of their products to the developed nations.
Rashed Al Mahmud Titumir, trustee of Unnayan Onneshan, urged the government to appoint a spokesperson to coordinate with the journalists and civil society so as to make available the WTO-related information.
