They said there is a chance that the tariffs on such products could be reduced drastically under the Non-Agricultural Market Access (NAMA) negotiations under the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

This will eventually minimise the comparative advantage of the country as being the beneficiary of preferential market access under GSP and similar other agreements, they added.

The views came at a seminar on "Impact of trade globalisation and free trade agreement on export of knit garments from Bangladesh" organised jointly by the IBA Alumni Association (IBAAA) and Bangladesh Knitwear Manu-factures & Export Association (BKMEA) at the CIRDAP auditorium. Dr. Ananya Raihan, executive director of the D.Net, presented the keynote paper at the seminar.

Raihan said Bangladesh is one of the few countries that effectively utilised the GSP, or generalised system of preference, to raise its market share in the developed countries. A general reduction in tariff would minimise this particular advantage of the country leading to increased competition in those market, he added.

The seminar chaired by Dr. Iftekhar Ghani Chowdhury was also addressed by Commerce Minister Altaf Hossain Choudhury as the chief guest. M A Baset, Vice president of BKMEA, Deepak Adhikary, Deputy General Manager of SouthAsia Enterprise Development Facility (SEDF), and Nurul Alam, President of IBAAA.

Altaf praised BKMEA for its relentless endeavours to diversify markets and said they are now exporting their products to 90 countries.

A training institution will be set up for the sector with the help of BKMEA and the government, he added.

MA Baset said the export growth of knitwear in the post-MFA period has been 32 percent, but the competitors of Bangladesh like China and India are doing even better than Bangladesh.