Commonwealth parliamentarians at a workshop yesterday criticised richer nations and international lending agencies for putting up barriers to market access and setting tough preconditions for loans.

The least developed and developing nations cannot sell goods to the markets of developed countries because of trade barriers, said the parliamentarians mostly from African countries, who attended the workshop as part of the 49th Commonwealth Parliamentary Association (CPA) conference at Bangladesh-China Friendship Conference Centre.

They also accused the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank (WB) of imposing stringent preconditions on poor countries for sanctioning loans.

They urged the developed nations to come forward to resolve disputed issues like farm subsidy and barriers to market access.

The negotiation capacity of a poor country slackens because of the precondition of bringing reforms to some sectors by the IMF and WB for urgent loans, one of the delegates said, adding the CPA should work to remove pressure of those organisations on poor nations.

Another delegate said the poultry farms in his country have suffered a blow because of a huge flow of goods from the developed nations and underscored enforcement of strong antidumping laws.

The developed nations should provide duty-free access for the goods from developing countries, remove all tariff and non-tariff barriers, allow free movement of natural persons and stop farm subsidy to ensure an equitable trade in the competitive world, the workshop was told.

Canadian lawmaker Sarmite Bulte chaired the workshop, "How can the Doha round contribute to increasing trade and investment opportunities for developing nations".

Constance Simelane from Swaziland, Dr Yusof Yacob from Malaysia, Patrick Rata of the World Trade Organisation (WTO),Abdul Alim from Bangladesh and Graham Hill from New Zealand also took part in the discussion.

They urged the CPA to work towards lifting billions of poor people from poverty.

Dr Yacob felt the developing nations should also take initiatives to remove restrictions on exchange of goods among themselves and urged the WTO to find ways to resolve agriculture and export subsidyissues.

Focussing on various aspects of Doha round conference, Abdul Alim said agriculture subsidy in the developed countries impacted agricultural productsin Bangladesh.