Tofail defends outcome of WTO talks

Commerce Minister Tofail Ahmed yesterday said Bangladesh gained much from the 10th WTO meeting, rejecting the CPD's view that the conference was disappointing for the country.

Bangladesh went to the World Trade Organisation meeting in Nairobi targeting four areas and the country successfully negotiated in all four, Ahmed told reporters at a hurriedly called press briefing at his secretariat office in Dhaka.

One of the four victories for Bangladesh is the extension of the pharmaceutical patent waiver until 2033 for the least-developed countries, he said.

The local pharmaceutical companies will be able to reproduce lifesaving drugs without paying the expensive patent fees. As a result, the drugs will be available in the local market at a fraction of the price in the developed world. The move will expedite the development of the local pharmaceutical industry.

Another achievement at the WTO conference was relaxation of the rules of origin, a set of criteria needed to determine the national source of a product. The LDCs will now be able to claim duty benefits on exports of products on which manufacturers have made only 25 percent value addition, compared to 30 percent earlier.

In other words, a product from an LDC can have up to 75 percent imported components and will still enjoy duty-free market access to developed countries.

Moreover, Ahmed said, the LDCs will enjoy preferential market access for the services sector until 2030 and they can subsidise transportation of their agricultural products.

This is for the first time the WTO members agreed to adopt a decision committing to protect itself as many regional trade agreements might hamper this organisation, Ahmed said.

“So, it is not right that the achievements of Bangladesh and other LDCs were disappointing -- we have achieved a lot.”

The other countries have also praised the role of Bangladesh at the WTO meeting in Nairobi, according to Ahmed. “This time, there was nothing disappointing for Bangladesh,” he said, adding that he spoke to officials of the Centre for Policy Dialogue to protest their statement.

The CPD, at a press conference on Wednesday on the recently concluded WTO meeting, said Bangladesh did not gain much from the talks as global leaders failed to reach a consensus on key deals.

The leaders failed to agree on a deal, among others, that would have extended meaningful duty-free access to goods from poor nations to developing and developed ones, the CPD said.

While the LDCs like Bangladesh currently enjoy duty-free access for 97 percent of its goods thanks to a consensus reached at the fifth ministerial meet in Hong Kong, it is not turning out to be very beneficial for them, according to the think-tank. The reason is: many countries are leaving out the major export items of the LDCs from the list of products that qualify for duty-free access.

For instance, Bangladesh's main export item – garment -- does not qualify for duty-free access to the US, its major shipping destination. But African LDCs, for whom garment is not a major export item, enjoy duty-free access to the US.

But Ahmed said almost all developed and developing countries except the US have allowed the duty-free access to Bangladeshi goods.

The minister went on to highlight the recent achievements of Bangladesh, for which “no appreciation came from the CPD”.

Many internationally renowned persons such as Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen and World Bank Chief Economist Kaushik Basu have recently praised the economic achievements of Bangladesh, he said.

Bangladesh is well ahead of the five South Asian nations in many social indices. The country has overtaken Pakistan in all the indices, and in many cases, is even ahead of India.

Its child and maternal mortality rates, life expectancy and foreign currency reserves are better than four other South Asian nations.

“Have you ever heard appreciations for the achievements of Bangladesh? The CPD never sees our development,” Ahmed said.

At the briefing, Abdul Matlub Ahmad, president of the Federation of Bangladesh Chambers of Commerce and Industry, said it is a matter of regret that there is no agreement between the CPD and the ministry on the achievements.

“The achievements of Bangladesh at the WTO meeting in Nairobi are great for us,” said Ahmad, who was also a member of the Bangladesh delegation at the WTO meeting.

“The extension of the patent waiver for the LDCs is particularly a great achievement.”

Mahbubur Rahman, president of the International Chamber of Commerce, Bangladesh, who was also a member of the delegation, said the glass is half-full and half-empty at the same time.

“Both are true. We cannot say that we did not achieve anything, but it is true that we could have achieved much more. We have to keep alive multilateralism, because for us and the LDCs, multilate-ralism is the answer in trade,” Rahman said.

Abdul Muktadir, secretary general of the Bangladesh Association of Pharmaceuticals Industries, said the importance of the WTO decision can be understood if the example of the pharmaceuticals industry of Bangladesh is given.

If the patent waiver had not been extended, Bangladeshi consumers would have to purchase a hepatitis vaccine at Tk 80,000, he said. The vaccine is now selling at Tk 480 in the local market.

“This is a good example of the importance of the WTO decision in global trade. The decision is a blessing for us, as Bangladesh is the only country among the 48 LDCs that is capable of producing medicine.”

The patent waiver was supposed to end on January 1 next year and the pharmaceutical companies expressed their concerns to the government about it.

“The minister began acting on it in 2014 to restore the waiver decision by the WTO,” he added.