Undercutting Small Farmers
Rice Trade in Bangladesh and WTO Negotiations
Tyranny of the forced liberalisation with virtual absence of domestic support to Bangladesh agriculture and dishing out of bounty along the lines of rigged rules in the resource-rich countries have contributed to stall the reduction of rural poverty in Bangladesh, with a yearly average of 0.32 per cent implying that it would take 135 years to eradicate poverty and 43 years to achieve the target of the Millennium Development Goals.
The Role of IMF in Policy Making in Bangladesh
Unnayan Onneshan has organized a round table discussion on “The Role of IMF in Policy Making in Bangladesh” at CIRDAP auditorium on 20th October, 2007. Md. Iqbal Ahmed presented a paper on the issue. Ahmed showed the effect of IMF policies with empirical data and ended with questioning its role.
Slippery Slopes: How Hong Kong Empowers Rich Countries to Choke the LDCs – A Rapid Assessment
This rapid assessment provides a brief account on the outcome of the Hong Kong Ministerial. The rhetoric of a special development package for the LDCs was aired in Hong Kong, and was told that, for sure, this Ministerial delivered on the promise of market access. The second part of the report examines the claim and contains an illustrative exercise that analyses the effectiveness of the deal by taking exportables of a single country to a single country market. Given the scenario, clearly, the country in question would not have much benefit from the availed market access as her exports concentrated mainly on few products and very limited number of destinations.
WTO and Non-Agricultural Market Access (in Bengali)
IFI Watch Bangladesh, Vol. - 2 No. - 3
The people of Bangladesh and their compatriots in other least developed countries were promised time and again including in Marrakesh, Singapore, Geneva, and Doha that they would enjoy better livelihood and the disadvantaged would be lifted out of poverty by “improving effective participation in the multilateral trading system’ and trade ministers are “committed to addressing the marginalization of least-developed countries in international trade.” It is timely to provide an independent review of implementation vis-à-vis the commitments made in such gatherings as they again meet from December 13 to 18, 2005 to take decision on how the governments have lived up to their promises.
