The government has initiated the process of widening the country's export market with appointment of business development consultants to a good number of developed countries including USA, UK, Japan and middle-east.
The commerce ministry is now working to appoint business development/sales consultants to these countries.
The ministry has already sat with its senior officials to review the issue.
Currently, it is reviewing different issues including working areas, cost for appointment of consultants and outcomes of earlier appointment of sales consultant to Silicon Valley, USA.
The ministry has asked the Business Promotion Council (BPC) to submit a detailed report in this regard shortly.
There is no positive result in expanding the country's export market although the government had appointed sales consultant to Silicon Valley, USA in 2002 under a project, a BPC official said.
The consultants will be based in Los Angeles (USA), London (UK), Tokyo (Japan) and Jeddah (Saudi Arabia).
They will work under the supervision of commercial councilors in respective countries.
Required TAPP/PDPP will be prepared within next three months and sent to the commerce secretary for approval.
Currently, Bangladesh earns over US$11 billion by exporting different goods to the countries concerned.
Among the countries, the highest export earnings come from USA.
"We want to increase the volume of our existing export earnings from the countries in a couple of years," a senior official of the commerce ministry told the FE.
The commerce ministry has already taken multiple measures to increase the country's export earnings. It has initiated to sign agreements including FTA/PTA with a number of countries, he mentioned.
The government is sincerely working to explore new business opportunities in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic across the globe.
It has already assigned commercial counsellors and first secretaries (commercial) of Bangladesh missions abroad to identify new export opportunities amid the coronavirus pandemic and post-pandemic and take actions accordingly.
At present, Bangladesh has 57 missions and 18 commercial wings abroad, according to the Export Promotion Bureau.
Bangladesh wants to increase its export earnings to $60 billion by 2021 from present level of $40.53 billion in FY '19.
The government has fixed a US$48 billion export target for the current fiscal year 2020-2021.
Of the amount, some US$41 billion has been fixed for the goods export sector and $7 billion for the services export sector.
