Bangladesh is on waiting for approval of quotas from India to import six commodities to deal with the import crisis of some daily commodities due to the Russia-Ukraine war.
However, sources said the India government thinks that the amount of import quota requested by Bangladesh is very high in terms of quantity. So they are analyzing the matter.
The products are rice, wheat, sugar, onion, ginger and garlic.
Bangladesh-India trade minister level meeting was held in New Delhi last December 22-23. Bangladesh wants an annual quota to import those products. If the quota is available, India will not be able to stop exporting these products to Bangladesh from time to time.
India has been giving these quota facilities to Bhutan and Maldives.
According to a source in the Ministry of Commerce, a part of the demand for daily necessities including rice, sugar, dal, ginger, garlic, onion is met through imports from India. But India sometimes stops exporting daily commodities to Bangladesh under various circumstances.
The vested class of traders take this opportunity to destabilize the entire market. However, Bangladesh will not fall under the ban even if India stops exporting products for any reason after the Bangladesh authorities get quota facilities from the Indian government for the import of daily commodities.
India is the second position in the import of goods from abroad. China is in the first position.
According to Bangladesh Bank, goods worth USD 1,369 million were imported from India in the fiscal year 2021-22. Of this, food grains are worth 220 million US dollars. In addition, sugar is imported worth 77 million dollars. In the previous financial year i.e. in the financial year 2020-21, goods imported from India were worth 8.59 billion dollars. Out of which the amount of food grain import is 100 million dollars. That year only sugar was imported worth 700 million dollars.
The amount of rice in the annual quota of import is 1.5 million metric tons. Out of this, 8-10 lakh government and 5-7 lakh metric ton import quota has been asked for individual traders.
Besides, wheat import quota facility of 20 lakh metric ton is sought, of which 5 to 7 lakh at the government level and 20 lakh metric ton at the private level. Among the other four products, sugar is 10 lakh metric tons, onion is 6 lakh metric tons, ginger is 1 lakh metric tons and garlic is 50 thousand metric tons.