BIMSTEC countries are expected to finalise the much-needed pending issues, including the determination of rules of origin of goods, product-specific rules (PSR) and operational certification procedure in October.
To this end, the multilateral regional organisation's secretariat has recently requested Bangladesh to propose a suitable date for holding the 21st Meeting of the BIMSTEC Working Group on Rules of Origin (WG-RoO).
It has also mooted to discuss and finalise the matters for the BIMSTEC Free Trade Area agreement.
The meeting may be held on October 18-19 virtually.
An official concerned says commerce ministry has already sent the proposed date to the BIMSTEC secretariat through foreign ministry.
The previous WG-RoO meeting was held in Dhaka from 10-11 January 2022 and it updated the draft text of the rules for determination of origin of goods.
The 20th meeting agreed to host the next in the first week of March 2022 to address the remaining issues.
However, despite proposing three times to host the meeting by Bangladesh, it could not be held due to inconvenience of few member states.
The second meeting of the BIMSTEC Working Group on Trade Facilitation (WG-TF) was hosted in Dhaka from 29-30 September 2019. It discussed
and revised the draft text of the Agreement on Trade Facilitation for the BIMSTEC FTA.
All but Nepal have already conveyed their comments and observations on the revised draft of the agreement, according to a BIMSTEC letter.
Between 2004 and 2018, according to the BIMSTEC, its Trade Negotiating Committee (TNC) held 21 rounds of FTA negotiations and the WG-RoO met 20 times to discuss and finalise the long pending issues.
Negotiations on trade in goods would be completed by the end of 2005 for implementation in July 2006, after which the TNC would proceed to negotiate on trade in services and investment and conclude these negotiations by 2007.
According to the BIMSTEC report, the Agreement on Trade in Goods of the Framework Agreement on the BIMSTEC Free Trade Area could not be concluded yet.
The Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) has 22 per cent, or 1.68 billion, of the world population and it has a combined GDP of $3.697 trillion per annum.
Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Thailand are the member states of the bloc.
The BIMSTEC FTA aims to enhance trade and investments among the member states for which a framework agreement was signed on 08 February 2004, which envisioned liberalisation, promotion and facilitation of trade in goods and services, investments as well as broader economic cooperation.
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