GUWAHATI, Feb 18 – Being aware of the tremendous potential for development of inter-regional trade between Bangladesh and North East India, the South Asian Enterprise Development Pacility (SEDF), funded by IFC, has taken up the task to facilitate formal Indo-Bangla trade in the region in a greater scale.
To achieve the goal of formalisation of the huge volume of informal/illegal trade going on across the Indo-Bangla border in the region, the SEDF is trying to facilitate frequent meaningful interaction amongst the businessmen and industry on both side of the border. The SEDF believes that opening up of the Indo-Bangla border in the region for trade purpose will be a ‘win-win’ situation for both Bangladesh and North East India and to make it happen strong public opinion have to grow to evoke positive response from both the governments.
‘At the end of the day, the Government has to listen to its business community,’ says the Dhaka based Programme Manager of the SEDF, Dr Anton De Wilde. He said SEDF is willing to facilitate people-to-people interaction to remove the communication gap and facilitate information sharing in order to trigger a revolution of sort as far as border trade between N-E India and Bangladesh is concerned. Dr Wilde informed that IFC and the World Bank may be interested in co-investing with Indian investors in North East and Bangladesh.
The SEDF official observes that N-E traders will gain more from trading with Bangladesh which is closer than the mainland India for the simple reason that it will be less expensive to reach Bangladesh market than the farway market in the mainland India.
Similarly, it will be less expensive to import items from Bangladeh by N-E traders than from rest of the India. In this regard, Dr Wilde pointed out that N-E required 90,000 tons of fish a year which is imported from Andhra Pradesh and Orissa. Bangladesh can supply to same volume of fish to the region at cheaper rate which will also go a long way in removing trade imbalance between India and Bangladesh.
Besides fish, import of Bangladeshi leather which is of higher quality than the varieties produced in India, will also help remove trade imbalance between the two countries as often alleged by Bangladesh. In the light of the stand taken by the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII), the SEDF official observes that Bangladeshi products should be given a free access to Indian market but the products should be monitored strictly.