Pakistan-Bangladesh trade to be escalated to $1 billion
Dhaka, Bangladesh | September 05, 2007 by
Pakistan has agreed to sell rice to Bangladesh as part of efforts to raise annual bilateral trade to $1.0 billion, officials of the two countries said on Thursday, after a two-day meeting in Dhaka.
“We export 1.5 million tonnes of rice annually,” said Pakistan’s foreign secretary Riaz Mohammad Khan. “We can sell coarse rice to Bangladesh to meet its immediate import requirements and also to boost trade between us,” he told reporters. Both the countries underscored the importance of their economic and commercial relations and decided to consider adopting measures such as Early Harvest Programme to reach the target of $1 billion per annum in the two-way trade besides addressing the issue of trade imbalance.
Current annual trade between the two countries totals around $350 million, officials said.
Bangladesh will import 450,000 tonnes of rice and 350,000 tonnes of wheat during the 2007-08 fiscal year (July-June) to meet domestic demands, partly pushed up by recent floods that damaged rice and other crops with $500 million, officials said.
The two sides underlined that steps should be taken to realise the provisions of the recent MoUs between the two sides on cooperation in the fields of Tourism and Agriculture, Fisheries and Livestock, said a joint statement issued after the talks.
Khan said 10,000 tonnes of wheat Pakistan had promised to gift Bangladesh before the floods would arrive next month. Earlier this month, Bangladesh approved two tenders to import a total 100,000 tonnes of non-basmati parboiled rice by November.
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