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Bangladesh has one of highest trade barriers in S Asia: WB

Star Business Report
Bangladesh still maintains a very restrictive trade policy and has one of the highest trade barriers in South Asia, said a World Bank (WB) report published yesterday.
The country has very high tariff and non-tariff trade compared to most of the countries, the report added.
Bangladesh ranked 113th and 107th in terms of trade policy and institutional environment respectively out of 125 countries studied.
These observations emerged from the World Trade Indicators (WT!) 2008, a new database and ranking tool that allow benchmarking and comparisons among 210 countries and customs territories across multiple trade-related indicators.
WTI 2008 shows that in 2007 most developing countries, including
Bangladesh, continued to improve trade policies supporting greater integration.
"Bangladesh has the potential to become a middle income country by its own dynamic performance. For that to happen Bangladesh must deal more seriously with its restrictive policy, poor infrastructure and red-tapism” said WB Country Director Xian Zhu while launching the report in Dhaka.
Prof Mustafizur Rahman, executive director of Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD), and Prof AKM Atiqur Rahman of North South University also spoke at the report launching.
In the report Bangladesh ranked 59th out of 125 countries in terms of market access.
Duty-free exports accounted for 6.9 percent of Bangladesh's total exports in 2007, the report said. Bangladesh's utilisa-
tion of Generalised System of Preference (GSP) for exports to the EU and the US was about 69 percent in 2007, it added.
Of the other indicators where Bangladesh has done relatively well are trade outcomes (51st out of 160 countries), external environment (5911) out of 125) and trade facilitation (87th out of 151).
Mustafizur Rahman raised question on under utilisation of trade preferences. "The utilisation should be 100 percent," he said.
Despite global reductions in tariffs and preferential trading arrangements, low-income country exporters still face the least favourable market access, as they pay average tariffs (3.7 percent) on their exports that are 32 percent higher than those faced by high-income country exporters (2.8 percent).