Dhaka faces further questions

Bangladesh yesterday faced further questions at the USTR follow-up meeting on continuation of GSP on export of some selected goods from the country, said Commerce Secretary Mahbub Ahmed.
"The officials of USTR (United States Trade Representative) asked us several questions, mainly on workers' rights and work environment at factories," Ahmed told The Daily Star over the phone from Washington.
The day before yesterday, a 13-member Bangladesh delegation led by the commerce secretary had attended the fourth round of USTR hearing in Washington. The judges' panel asked the delegation more than 150 questions on workers' rights and work environment in factories and other issues.
Bangladesh had to face the hearing due to a petition filed by the American Federation of Labour and Congress of Industrial Organisations (AFL-COI), the largest trade union in the US, seeking cancellation of the GSP facility for Bangladesh on the grounds of poor implementation of workers' rights and bad work environment.
The US government introduced the Generalised System of Preferences (GSP) scheme in 1976 to allow duty-free import of some selected goods from the least developed countries (LDCs).
"We are hopeful that the US government will continue the GSP facility for Bangladesh, as the USTR officials seemed satisfied with the documents we had submitted and our replies during the hearing," said Ahmed.
Bangladesh would have to submit a few more documents to the USTR within a week, he added.
The USTR, chief trade adviser and trade negotiation body for the US president, will soon send Barack Obama the notes of the hearing for opinion. The verdict of the hearing will be announced in June.
Usually, the USTR hearing takes place once in every three years. However, this time it is being held a year after the previous one due to the fire incident at Tazreen Fashions Ltd in Ashulia on November 24 last year. The fire killed 112 workers.
Bangladesh attended the first USTR hearing in 2007, the second in 2009 and the third in January last year.