Staff Reporter
Bangladesh wants to raise bilateral trade with Indonesia to more than US$10 billion by reduc-ing the existing trade gap and expanding exports of readymade garments, pharmaceuticals and ag-ricultural products.
Commerce Minister Khandakar Abdul Muk-tadir made the remarks during a meeting with Indonesian Deputy For-eign Minister Moham-mad Anis Matta at the Commerce Ministry yes-terday, said a press re-lease.
The commerce minister said bilateral trade cur-rently stands at around $4 billion annually, with Bangladesh importing goods worth about $3.5 billion from Indonesia while its exports to the country amount to only around $56 million.
He stressed the need to increase Bangladesh’s exports to Indonesia to narrow the huge trade imbalance.
“Bangladesh-Indonesia bilateral trade can be in-creased to more than $10 billion if barriers to mar-ket access are removed,” the minister said.
The two sides discussed advancing negotiations on the proposed Prefer-ential Trade Agreement (PTA), Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA), en-ergy cooperation, mutual recognition of halal certi-fication, and greater mar-ket access for Bangla-deshi potatoes, pharma-ceuticals and vaccines.
The commerce minister said Bangladesh is pro-ducing internationally competitive pharmaceu-tical products and ex-porting them to more than 100 countries.
He sought Indonesia’s cooperation in reducing procedural complexities, including drug registra-tion requirements, to facilitate greater entry of Bangladeshi pharmaceu-tical products into the Indonesian market.
The Indonesian deputy foreign minister wel-comed Bangladesh’s pro-posal to organise a solo exhibition of Bangla-deshi pharmaceutical products in Jakarta and assured cooperation in arranging the event.
The two countries have held four rounds of dis-cussions on a PTA, but negotiations have re-mained stalled since 2023 due to differences over duty-free market access for Bangladesh’s readymade garment products.
The Indonesian deputy foreign minister said alt-hough the textile and apparel sectors of the two countries are competi-tors, the existing issues should be identified and addressed through mutu-al efforts.
He proposed a ministeri-al-level meeting on the sidelines of an interna-tional trade exhibition to be held in Indonesia from October 14 to 18.
He also invited the Bang-ladesh commerce minis-ter and a delegation to attend the exhibition.
The meeting also dis-cussed Indonesia’s state-owned oil and gas com-pany Pertamina’s pro-posed operation of Bang-ladesh’s Single Point Mooring (SPM) termi-nal.
The two sides also dis-cussed the possibility of increasing coal imports from Indonesia for Bang-ladesh’s coal-fired power plants.
The commerce minister proposed mutual recog-nition of laboratory test results to resolve testing and registration-related complications affecting Bangladesh’s potato ex-ports to Indonesia.
Bangladesh had attempt-ed to export potatoes to Indonesia during 2015-2019, but the initiative could not progress due to such complications.
The meeting also dis-cussed mutual recogni-tion of halal certification and standards to boost trade in halal products, including the possibility of establishing govern-ment-to-government co-operation between rele-vant authorities of the two countries.
Both sides expressed their interest in strength-ening Bangladesh-Indonesia economic rela-tions by expanding trade and investment.
Indonesian Ambassador to Bangladesh Listyo Wati and relevant offi-cials from both countries were present at the meet-ing.
