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February 28, 2001
Dhaka-(Bangla2000news) – All the Least Developed Countries (LDcs), including Bangladesh, will avail duty-free access of their goods, excepting arms, rice, banana and sugar, to the European Union. The decision, taken by the General Affairs Council (GAC) of the European Union under its EBA initiative (Everything-but-Arms), will come into effect immediately, said an EU press release. “However, rice, banana and sugar will get a successive phasing out of tariffs under the EU customs privileges,” added the press release. Bananas will be duty-free by 2006 and sugar and rice by 2009. But already this year, duty-free imports will be permitted for limited quotas of sugar and rice. “It shows our seriousness to improve the economic conditions of the LDCs. This gives an important signal to the UN conference on LDCs this May and for the forthcoming WTO conference,” said Minister for Trade Leif Pagrotsky, representing Swedish Presidency of the European Union. “This is a worldwide first. At the end of the day, they (the 48 countries) will have 100 percent access with no exclusions, except arms, of course,” EU Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy said. About 46 percent of Bangladesh export goes to EU with an overwhelming dominance of readymade garments and a substantial component of these exports enjoy duty-free status under the existing GSP, which will expire on 31 December 2001. |