Commerce Minister Tipu Munshi on Sunday said the Bangladesh economy has now reached a new height and thus earned enormous honour and dignity by the world community. The government, after assuming power for the fresh term, is now making its all-out effort to utilize the optimum level of opportunities from the related world bodies and global community to flourish its business and economic activities, he added.
“We have to do all possible things to meet the target to reach $6,000 per capita income by the year 2030”, Munshi added. The minister was addressing the inaugural ceremony of a training workshop, organised by his ministry for the members of Economic Reporters’ Forum (ERF) for enhancing skill and efficiency of newsmen regarding WTO affairs, international trade, at the ERF office at Paltan in city.
In this connection, theminister said the Ministry of Commerce has taken an initiative to be involved with all stakeholders and partners and make them involved with the ministry for ensuring a meaningful, visible and sustainable economic and commercial progress of the country. President of the ERF, Saiful Islam Dilal presided over the opening session while Additional Secretary, Ministry of Commerce and Director General, WTO Cell at the Ministry, Munir Chowdhury attended as special guest.
MunirChowdhury mentioned that trade is the engine of the economic growth. Now Bangladesh is laying prime focus on the markets of the European states and USA,especially to boost its export growth. He said, the trade gap between Bangladesh and India was wider because of the existing non-tariff or para tariff barriers but it has been narroweda bit in the last few months for removal of some of the barriers.This happened because of the initiative of both Bangladesh and Indian governments.
He said, the overall trade volume of the country has now increased significantly. The government has a target of fetching US dollar 60 billion from exportsin the current fiscal, of which the RMG sector’s revenue is aimed at US dollar 50 billion and the rest US dollar 10 billion from other sectors. “We are now graduating from least developed countries (LDCs) to middle income status.There are some major challenges that we have to overcome in graduation process.So mainstreaming the trade and commerce has been vital for us”, Chowdhury added.
ERF President Saiful Islam Dilal thanked the minister for considering that cooperation and coordination with media community has to be strengthenedand arranging such training workshop with ERF member journalists. The minister further said the bondage of his ministry with ERF has just started and it will go a long way in the days to come through which the country’s trade and commercial activities will get new momentum.
ERF General Secretary, Rashedul Islam, AsjadulKibria and other senior office bearers were also present on the occasion. In the first phase, total 60 members of ERF from different electronic and print media participated in the inaugural day of the training workshop.
