EDEN BUILDING TO STOCK EXCHANGE Published: 09 September 2018 https://dailyasianage.com/news/139124/fta---learning-from-neighbors-and-competitors
FTA - Learning from neighbors and competitors M S Siddiqui Bangladesh is the only country with no bilateral free trade partners anywhere. All the competitors of Bangladesh have multiple free trade agreements (FTA) with their respective trading partners, As the few examples, Afghanistan has four FTAs, Bhutan - three, Cambodia - nine, India - 28, Indonesia - 17, South Korea - 21, Lao PDR - 11, Myanmar -11, Malaysia - 21, Pakistan - 16, Philippines - 11, Sri Lanka - seven, Thailand - 22 and Vietnam - 17 FTAs. Bangladesh signed some regional trade agreements as well, such as SAFTA, APTA, SAPTA, and BIMSTEC.
Bangladesh is enjoying duty-free facility in Canada, Australia and Europe. It will lose the opportunity after graduating from the least-developed country status by 2024. Our close neighbor and competitor Vietnam has entered into trade agreements with 55 nations.
Vietnam, a comparatively small economy, has signed 17 FTAs with powerful blocs like the European Union, and large economies like Japan and South Korea.
Vietnam is currently host of 21,666 foreign direct investment (FDI) projects worth US$293 billion, with investors from more than 100 different countries. All these investments go to Vietnam to take the opportunity of TPP agreement for export to US market.
The world is grouping in few major trade groups of such as RCEP, TPP and TTIP. The Regional Cooperation Economic Partnership (RCEP), a proposed trade initiative including the 10 ASEAN members and China, Japan, South Korea, India, Australia and New Zealand, has been the most talked about recently.
Negotiations on the RCEP started in 2012 and 16 rounds have been completed so far, covering trade in goods and services, competition policies and dispute settlement, among other things. The RCEP would be the largest free trade bloc in the world, accounting for 40 per cent of global trade and 45 per cent of the world's population, with a combined GDP of US$22 trillion and set to finalize by end of 2018.
Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is another FTA with US, Australia, Canada, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, Vietnam, Chile, Brunei, Singapore and New Zealand has been formed but US President withdraw from the treaty after assuming his office on 22nd January 2017 but actively considering to enter in to the agreement again.