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Download PDF Bangladesh’s international trade relations have been suffering badly for quite a long time due to poor negotiation skills and lack of expertise in related government agencies.
Government posts earmarked for officials from the trade cadre are usually filled by officials from the administrative cadre resulting in a vacuum of experts in the commerce ministry, sources said.
The ministry failed to create a pool of experts on international trade as the highly technical department, World Trade Organization (WTO) Cell, under the ministry is treated like any other administrative departments by the government, the sources added.
Only three from the 30 officers, who got training on dealing with WTO issues from the organisation’s head office in Geneva, Switzerland, are now working in the WTO Cell, said Nasir Uddin, the immediate past director general of the cell.
“The country needs a permanent pool of experts at both government and private levels to maximise gains from negotiations at regional and global levels,” Nasir Uddin added.
If an officer is transferred to an administrative post after getting involved with trade negotiations, it is a kind of talent waste, Nasir feels.
Currently, only one official from the trade cadre is posted in a Bangladesh mission abroad as a commercial councillor, while the remaining 18 such posts are filled by officials from the administrative cadre with little or no knowledge about global trade, another official of the ministry said.
The parliamentary standing committee on commerce ministry in March 2006 suggested that all the 19 posts of commercial councillors be filled by officials from the trade cadre, Shamsul Alam, secretary general of Bangladesh Civil Service (BCS) Trade Cadre Officers’ Association said.
The suggestion was approved by an inter-ministerial meeting on July 16, 2006, which was chaired by erstwhile commerce minister Hafiz Uddin Ahmed, and where representatives of the ministries of foreign affairs, finance, establishment, and jute and textile were present, he added.
The meeting also decided to increase the number of posts in the trade cadre from 38 to 72, and to fill all the six posts of bureaucrats in the office of registrar of joint stock companies, seven in the office of the chief controller of insurance, all cadre posts in the office of chief controller of import and export, and four posts of bureaucrats in the Export Promotion Bureau, with officials from the trade cadre, Alam said.
But no follow-up has been in sight so far, and most of the posts still remain filled by officials from the administrative cadre.
Public Service Commission, the highest body for recruiting cadre services officials, has not recruited a single official in the trade cadre between 1986 and 2003, resulting in marginalisation of the country’s specialised cadre service, sources said.
It is alleged that favouritism in most cases influenced the selection process of officials for training at the World Trade Organisation headquarters in Geneva on issues like global trade aspects, trade negotiation and WTO rules.
“Our capacity for trade negotiation has been built, but has not been used properly due to a selection process dogged by favouritism,” regretted a high official of the commerce ministry.
Besides, the WTO Cell has been running with seven out of its nine posts filled by officials from the administrative cadre.
Only seven trade cadre officials are currently posted in the commerce ministry while it has 55 posts for such cadres.
International trade expert and Executive Director of CPD Debapriya Bhattacharya said challenges have always been there before Bangladesh in dealing with international trade but it will get a new dimension as the Doha Development Round has resumed.
“The technical capacity cannot develop if the WTO Cell itself remains paralysed,” Debapriya added.
He said a major task of the government will be to mobilise local expertise and opinions of the business community to supplement government capacities on the one hand and to provide proper feedback to the Bangladesh Mission in Geneva on the other.
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