Seek duty benefits from new Congress: Mozena

Bangladesh should ask the new Congress in January for duty benefits for its readymade garment products to the American market, Dan Mozena, the US ambassador to Bangladesh, said yesterday.
“If I would have represented Bangladesh the prime objective would have been to achieve duty-free access to the US market,” Mozena told journalists at the luncheon meeting of the American Chamber of Commerce in Bangladesh.
He said the matter is to be decided by the Congress, to wit the new Congress which will be formed in January.
“If I were a Bangladeshi, once the [US presidential] election is over in two days I would have reached out to the Congress to remove those tariffs,” he added.
Bangladeshi garment exporters have to pay on average 15.30 percent duty to enter the US market, whereas for some developed and developing countries the duty is below four percent.
The first annual session of the US-Bangladesh partnership dialogue took place in Washington in September, which Mozena said was a “grand success”.
“I believe that this growing partnership has contributed, and will continue to contribute, to the emergence of new Bangladesh, the middle-income Bangladesh, Sonar Bangladesh,” he said.
“I am proud that America is doing its part in helping Bangladesh become the next Asian tiger.”