WTO chief's wise counsel

Director General, World Trade Organisation (WTO), Pascal Lamy in his Dhaka University convocation address on Saturday gave an invaluable assessment of Bangladesh's potential from a multi-lateral trading perspective.
Citing the success of garment sector giving a lie to apprehensions that it may not survive the post-quota phase-out era, it has not only held its ground but even prospered. RMG accounts for 75 percent of the country's export, about 10 percent of its GNP, and employ three million people, most of them women.
From his vantage position, as WTO Chief Lamy has seen, Bangladesh's comparative advantage being brought to bold relief by the removal of quotas. Another impetus was injected into the sector through simplification of rules of origin pertaining to duty and quota free market access to the EU.
The growth of the pharmaceutical industry was 'consolidated' through the waiver under the WTO rules on intellectual property rights.
Both in the garments and pharmaceutical sectors Bangladesh has used the flexibility of the multilateral trading system to its advantage. In this sense it is a 'model' to other LDCs.
The WTO secretary general also pointed out that the 8.5 percent drop in absolute poverty that Bangladesh has recorded is remarkable. Overall, the WTO chief sees Bangladesh 'as a role model in poverty battle.'
So far so good, but the challenge facing Bangladesh is diversifying its export basket. This will help fend off the kind of economic shocks already experienced by many countries that may yet have ripple effects on Bangladesh economy.
Bangladesh needs a great deal of strategic planning keeping in view the country's transformation on to a middle-income status by 2021 when preferential treatment attached to LDCs will be no longer available.
The next decade is going to prove crucial for Bangladesh in a scenario where 'active civil society, vibrant private sector and profound transformation in social sector' notwithstanding political stability is imperative to provide the underpinnings to investment in services, infrastructure, trade facilitation and integration of businesses into global economy. That is the crux of the challenge we face.