Committed to PEOPLE'S RIGHT TO KNOW Vol. 5 Num 437 Thu. August 18, 2005       Letters to Editor Increasing our negotiation capacity Bazlur Rahman Mohsin Hall, Dhaka University Experts are agreed on strengthening our bargaining / negotiation capacity at the discussion forum that will be held later this year in Hong Kong to realise our demands from the developed nations. After the fiasco of Cancun declaration we have seen no breakthrough in the pattern of discussion of inter-ministerial meeting of World Trade Organisation, said the Executive Director of a think-tank, at a recent workshop in the city. He stressed the need for concessional facilities in our agricultural sector at the next round of discussion. Mentioning the concession and subsidy provided by US and other European countries he said that Switzerland was subsidising a cow three times more than the daily per capita income of a Bangladeshi. Identifying our lack of negotiation ability with the donor agencies he said it was a technical crisis resulting in failure in most of the cases for attaining our right. Searching adequate incentive from the Hong Kong discussion he also said the next meeting will provide about $ 280 billion incentives but 60 per cent of this will go to developed countries. Before the next round of discussion in Hong Kong he detected some problems including trade preference loss worth of $ 300-400 million, under multilateral discussion, for Bangladesh. Secondly, the down payment in cotton will hike the price of cloth. Narrating the significance of agricultural subsidy for Bangladesh he said among 50 LDC, 40 countries import food to meet local demand and only 14 export agricultural products. Only these 14 countries will get preference from the next meeting. Mentioning Paris discussion as a basis of duty reduction on some specific items he said the next meeting would formulate the process or method how to reduce the duty varying country to country aimed at saving the interest of LDCs. I agree with the suggestion that our government should focus on strengthening our negotiation capacity.