Saarc trade, tourism fair starts March 31

The three-day 11th Saarc Trade Fair and Tourism Mart 2012 will kick off on March 31 in Dhaka to showcase products and services of the regional trade bloc.
The event will take place at Bangabandhu International Conference Centre, where entrepreneurs of eight Saarc (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) countries will showcase their products and services.
“Other purposes of holding such a big event are increasing the intra-regional trade and exchange of information among the Saarc nations,” Commerce Minister GM Quader told reporters at Sonargaon Hotel yesterday.
A total of 300 stalls will be set up at the venue. Of them, 50 will be allocated for the tourism sector and 100 stalls for the trade sector from the Saarc countries, other than Bangladesh, Quader said.
Twenty stalls will be allocated for 10 Saarc observer countries (the US, the EU, Myanmar, South Korea, Iran, Mauritius, Australia, Japan, China and Turkey) while 130 stalls will be allocated to the Bangladeshi entrepreneurs.
At least six seminars on trade and tourism issues will be held on the sidelines of the fair.
The Saarc member countries will arrange various cultural events everyday, Quader said. The fair will be open to all from 10am to 8pm without any entry fee.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina is expected to inaugurate the fair as the chief guest, the minister said.
The Export Promotion Bureau, Ministry of Commerce, Ministry of Civil Aviation and Tourism and Bangladesh Tourism Board will co-organise the fair, said Shubhashish Bose, EPB vice-chairman.
He said the first Saarc Trade Fair and Tourism Mart was held in India in January 1996 while the last one the 10th fair was held in December 2010 in Nepal.
Earlier, Bangladesh had experienced the arrangement of the fifth fair in Dhaka in December 2003.
Currently, the volume of trade among the Saarc nations, including Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, the Maldives and Afghanistan is below 5 percent of the participating nations' total overseas trade.