By Ashis Biswas
KOLKATA: Far from provoking a trade war against India, Bangladesh business circles feel that bilateral official level talks should begin immediately to work out a solution to some of the niggling problems that have arisen of late. They would convey their concern to Dhaka-based authorities soon, arguing with Dhaka that Bangladeshis would lose far more than India in any such confrontation.
Judging by recent developments, with both countries ordering restrictive functional measures, in daily transactions, a sharp drop in the level of business has already occurred. The reduction of movement of goods from both sides through the integrated land checkposts, has already reduced, affecting local economic activities on both sides of the border.
The concern and negative reaction over recent developments have been more noticeable in Dhaka, Sections of the Assam-based media have reported that a major reduction in the movements/sales by road had hurt Bangladesh far more than India, in terms of increased transport costs and delays in the despatch of their garment exports..
The reaction from Indian businessmen has not been markedly aggressive, but there is general surprise over certain unilateral moves made by Dhaka concerning border trade as well as imports and exports, without explanation!
As an example, they point to the recent decision taken by Bangladesh not to import yarn and other related items that are necessary to produce various types of garments, the mainstay of Bangladesh’s total exports. Before the interim Government headed by Chief Adviser M. Yunus took over, Bangladesh imported at least 25/30% of these requirements from India.
Now this has stopped without benefit of any explanation. By way of a rationale, the Yunus-led administration insists that it would like to expand and diversify its business and trade with other countries like Pakistan and Turkey, so that Dhaka’s dependence on any one source for the supply of various items can be reduced . Most observers have explained that such moves, also fit in very well with the overall policy of team Yunus to do more business with especially Islamic countries.
Such steps were also in sync with the generally anti-India agitations that had been recently organised by Islamic extremists calling for a total boycott of India and its goods — as a component of their anti Awami League (AL) agitation.… .
After all, the AL enjoyed the support of GOI and in return, the latter had been allowed to enjoy certain trade transit facilities and other relief through Bangladesh territory. Needless to add, extremist Islamic elements never mentioned the substantial transit fees Bangladesh had been earning from India for using such facilities… .
This is also not about Dr Yunus trying out a new concept seeking to strengthen Bangladeshi exports. On its side, Bangladesh announced the closure of several smaller checkposts handling the movement of Indian items again, without prior notice to India. The move has stopped India from using its transition rights for the movement of its goods into Bangladesh, or for sending its items from say, Kolkata to Tripura, and vice versa.
In other words Dhaka had ensured that India would have to revert to its earlier dependence on using the chicken’s neck to carry its own goods from one part of its own territory to another!
Following these steps, Indian government announced that from now on Bangladesh would be able to send its garment exports through only two major ports, in Mumbai and Kolkata. Smaller Indian checkposts would not handle Bangladeshi export items. This means that Bangladesh would find its costlier and time consuming to carry out its garment exports, as it could access no more than two major Indian ports.
Further, with India disallowing Bangladesh from using its channel of smaller ports would lead to Bangladesh, losing its transit rights/concessions to use Indian territory on specially favoured terms!
What has forced Bangladeshi business circles to approach Dhaka and urging it to open negotiations with India is the fact that garments earn account for nearly 80/85% of its total export earnings, unlike India, whose economy was stronger and its exports also more varied and secured than that of Bangladesh!
It remains to be seen how long Bangladesh takes to resume negotiations on these and related matters with India. (IPA Service)
