Bangladesh will up the telecommunication and tourism
sectors to South Asian nations under the SAARC Agreement on Trade in Services
(SATIS).

The decision of the government will be formally announced to the SAARC
member-countries during the upcoming expert group meeting on SATIS, scheduled
to be held in Kathmandu on January 17-18.

The decision has recently been taken by the Ministry of Commerce (MoC)
following a proposal by Bangladesh Tariff Commission (BTC) in this connection.
Earlier, the BTC held a number of meetings with stakeholders and other
government agencies to finalise the list of service sectors for other South
Asian countries.

“We want to put into operation the SATIS by opening up a few sectors. Our
private sector is yet to be fully ready to compete with other South Asian countries
in case the entire service sector of the Bangladesh economy is opened up to
other prospective South Asian nations,” Md Ghulam Hossain, secretary, MoC,
told the FE.

Eight South Asian nations, which comprise the South Asian Association for
Regional Cooperation (SAARC), signed the landmark agreement in April, 2010, but
the members except India have shown little willingness to implement the accord
fully, officials said Monday.

Four leading SAARC members, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, have
ratified the agreement, but the four others, Afghanistan, Bhutan, Nepal and the
Maldives, have yet to follow suit.

The last expert group meeting on SATIS, held in September last year in
Kathmandu, ended without any ‘tangible progress’ owing to the feet-dragging by
most of the members in the economic bloc.

“The members barring India were not interested to execute the deal,”
a top Bangladeshi trade diplomat who attended the last expert group meeting
said.

He, however, said the upcoming expert group meeting might come out with some
positive results for implementing the deal.

MoC officials said most of the nations including Bangladesh are concerned that
the agreement would open up their budding service sector to India’s financial
juggernaut, “which is well-positioned to reap most of the benefits from
the agreement”.

“That’s why, we favour opening the service sector in phases,” a
senior BTC official said.

He said lack of in-depth knowledge about the benefits and pitfalls of trade in
the service sector was a key stumbling block to the execution of the agreement.

He added that the preliminary assessment, conducted on the strength and
weaknesses of the service sector by the MoC last year, failed to project a
concrete picture on the issue.

India requested Bangladesh to open up a good number of sub-sectors under the
service sector. The areas include accounting, auditing, urban planning, medical
and dental services, advertising, electronic media, rail transport, pipeline
transport, construction and related engineering services, education,
environment, and investment in the country’s financial sector.

Besides, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Nepal have also recently submitted their
respective request lists to Bangladesh. However, the areas sought by these
countries could not be known.

By Telecomlead.com Team
[email protected]