This emerged during bilateral trade talks at the Ministry of Commerce here yesterday. Commerce Minister Altaf Hossain Chowdhury led the 14-member Bangladesh delegation while Chinese Vice-Minister for Commerce Yu Guangzhou led a 12-member delegation at the talks.

The Chinese delegation is in the city to attend the 11th Bangladesh-China Joint Economic Commission (JEC) meeting, which begins here today.

"We discussed at the meeting how China can import more products from Bangladesh," Guangzhou told reporters after the talks.

"We'll continue to offer Bangladesh trade preferences to promote its exports to China," he said, adding that a Chinese business delegation would soon visit Bangladesh to hold talks with the local business community to identify and finalise the products to be offered preferences.

China has already agreed to provide duty-free access of 83 Bangladeshi products to its market and trade preferences to some 34 products under the Bangkok Agreement. The products are supposed to enjoy the preferences effective from January 1, 2006.

Commerce Minister Altaf Hossain Chowdhury told reporters that Bangladesh had earlier submitted a list of products to China for consideration, from which they allowed 83 items.

They will, however, consider other items after consultations of the business communities of the two countries, he added.

The minister said that the Chinese delegation also agreed to import products directly from Bangladesh instead of the existing practices in some cases like leather to import through third country, mainly Hong Kong.

He said the delegation will visit the export processing zones (EPZs) to plan joint venture investment.