The intercessional meeting of the US-Bangladesh Trade and Investment Cooperation Forum Agreement (TICFA) Council will be held today (22 April) in Dhaka.
Brendan Lynch, Assistant for South and Central Asia at the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR) has already arrived in Dhaka to attend the meeting.
“In the meeting, Bangladesh will seek trade facilities in the US market. On the other hand, the US will emphasise labour reform, intellectual property and data protection laws,” said sources at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Commerce.
According to a source at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the meeting will be led by Brendan Lynch who has has already reached Dhaka with a delegation on a three-day visit. The senior secretary of the Ministry of Commerce Tapan Kanti Ghosh will lead the delegation of Bangladesh in the meeting.
This is the first visit of a US representative to Bangladesh after the 12th National Elections of Bangladesh.
An official of the Ministry of Commerce said, “The meeting will highlight the progress that Bangladesh has achieved on the labour issue and the design that Bangladesh has sent to the International Labour Organisation (ILO) will be focused. Besides, Bangladesh's main goal in the meeting is to highlight the issue of getting trade benefits for Bangladeshi products in the US market.”
Diplomatic sources said that the US will emphasise labour reform, intellectual property and data protection laws at the meeting. Besides, highlighting the issue of labour law reform and implementation, the US side may want to know the progress made since the last TICFA meeting.
The seventh TICFA meeting between Bangladesh and the United States was held in September last year.
