DHAKA: The National Single Window for Trade Working Group held its inaugural meeting on January 10.

Led by the Chairman, National Board of Revenue, the 39-member working group comprises representatives from key government ministries and agencies including the key certificate, licensing and permit issuance agencies for trade and representatives from leading private sector associations.

In a bid to address challenges facing faster clearance of increased trade volume, the National Board of Revenue has formed this working group which will aid in the implementation of the National Single Window for Trade with assistance from the World Bank Group.

Bangladesh has experienced average GDP growth rate of 6 percent over the past decade.

The seventh five year plan has forecast an average 7.4 per cent economic growth rate of Bangladesh over the next five years and the country has been classified as a "Next Eleven" emerging market and one of the "Frontier Five" emerging economies in the world by Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan respectively.

A recent analysis of export and import data suggests that trade in Bangladesh has more than doubled in the last five years. While trade and traders have increased, the clearance processes have still remained more or less the same despite initiatives for automation.

A Single Window for trade is a facility that enables concerned stakeholders involved in trade and transport to lodge standardized information and documents with a single entry point to fulfill all import, export, and transit-related regulatory requirements. In this system, documents and data should only be submitted once reducing time and cost of trade.

Ensuring productive deployment of human resources, a single window system for trade can increase the speed of clearance, saving time for traders, offering 24/7 service availability.

BDST: 1240 HRS, JAN 12, 2016
RR/SMS