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Trade experts see increasing export opportunities of agricultural products in the EU and Japanese market by exploiting the trade preferences given by the European Union and the Asian economic powerhouse.

Speaking at a dialogue Sunday, they said Bangladesh is yet to reap the full benefits of the everything but arm (EBA) offer of the EU and new generalised system of preference scheme of Japan.

Professor Mustafizur Rahman, in his keynote speech, said that agriculture has a huge market as it constitutes 11 per cent of the global trade while textile sector accounting for 12 per cent.

The EBA enhances the comparative opportunity of export to EU since intra-EU trade is set to decrease when the European countries will cut farm subsidies in line with the latest WTO deal, he said.

Professor Mustafiz co-authored the research paper with Ananya Raihan, which shows that only 61.3 per cent of all exports from Bangladesh can enjoy EU-GSP facilities.

Though EU is the major trading partner accounting for 50 per cent of the country’s total export, export to Japan remained lower due to stringent non-tariff barriers, said the economists at the function, arranged by the Centre for Policy Dialogue, a local research organisation.

The CPD arranged the dialogue on ‘In Search of New Products and New Markets for Bangladesh’ at the CIRDAP auditorium.

Commerce Minister Alatf Hossain Chowdhury, who spoke at the function as the chief guest, said that the government would form a high-powered committee to promote country’s agricultural export.

CPD chairman Professor Rehman Sobhan chaired the function, also attended by former commerce minister Amir Khosru Mahmud Chowdhury.

The commerce minister expressed hope that new GSP scheme would help to increase export to Japan.

“If we can increase export to Canada (with the help of market access), why can not to Japan?”

The EU and Japanese envoys stressed that Bangladesh needs to comply with the quality standards of the products to increase exports.

“Consumers in the EU are very careful about the food safety and they want value of their money,” said Esko Kentrschynskyj, head of the Delegation of the European Union.

Matsushiro Horiguchi, ambassador of Japan in Dhaka, was of the view that quality of the products is more important to the Japanese than price, and Bangladesh needs to ensure the quality first.

Exporters who spoke at the function identified non-tariff barriers as a big problem to export products to countries like Japan.

Bangladesh Frozen Food Export Association president Quazi Monirul Huq said, “We can not export to Japan as we are facing so many non-tariff barriers there.”