Bangladesh is all set to demonstrate compliance with the conditions outlined by the United States to get back Generalised System of Preferences (GSP) facilities. On June 27 last year, Bangladesh’s GSP status was suspended.
A delegation from the office of the United States Trade Representatives (USTR) is scheduled to arrive in Dhaka tomorrow to review the implementation status of the conditions, Senior Commerce Secretary Hedayetullah Al Mamoon said yesterday.
“Through the publication of the gazette of the Labour Act, all of the conditions outlined by the US government for the restoration of GSP have been implemented,” Commerce Minister Tofail Ahmed told the Dhaka Tribune by telephone from Geneva.
“We have done our job and it is now up to the US government whether or not they will restore the GSP,” he said.
Tofail said the country had completed the necessary inspection and identified less than 2% of factories as vulnerable – a rate lower than that in developed countries.
Factory workers are now allowed to form trade unions which is being reflected in the number of new trade union registrations, which stood at 464 as of last month.
Michael J Delaney, assistant trade representative for South and Central Asia, will lead the delegation from September 19 to 23 that will look for evidence of the transformation of Bangladesh’s RMG sector.
He will be accompanied by USTR director for labour affairs Michael O’Donovan, Bruce Levine, office director of Democracy, Human Rights and Labour at the US Department of State and Jennifer Goodyear, international relations officer at the International Labour Affairs Bureau at the US Department of Labour.
During the visit, the delegation is scheduled to hold meetings with government officials, employers, workers, trade unions, the International Labour Organisation, the Alliance on Bangladesh Worker Safety, the Accord for Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh and other organisations, according to the US Embassy in Dhaka.
They plan to travel to Chittagong to visit the Bangladesh Export Processing Zones’ Authority, representatives from the shrimp processing sector and other local organisations.
The delegation seeks to learn more regarding efforts made by the Bangladeshi government and other Bangladeshi actors in support of the Sustainability Compact and the Generalised System of Preferences (GSP) Action Plan, sources said.
During a recent meeting with the US ambassador at the Commerce Ministry, Tofail told journalists that the US assistant trade representative would visit Bangladesh in mid-September to see first-hand the progress made by Bangladesh in the field of workers’ safety and rights.
Senior Labour and Employment Secretary Mikail Shipar yesterday said the Labour Ministry had attended to all of the issues, including a publicly accessible database, ensuring rights to organisation and publishing the rules of the Labour Act, 2013. The act is aimed at safeguarding workers’ rights.
“After implementing the conditions, the government is now monitoring progress,” said Shipar. “It is an ongoing process.”
US President Barack Obama earlier said the trade facility had been suspended because Bangladesh had not taken steps to afford internationally-recognised worker rights to employees, especially those working in the RMG sector.
Last month, the US government renewed GSP trade facilities for 122 nations but Bangladesh was excluded from the list.
The Bangladesh government has hastened to complete the work outlined by the Sustainability Compact and the GSP Action Plan so it can make a case for a review of its eligibility for GSP trade facilities.
