Commerce Ministry Senior Secretary Tapan Kanti Ghosh on Monday said the Export Readiness Fund (ERF), a matching-grant programme of the Export Competitiveness for Jobs Project, has shown Bangladesh can diversify its exports beyond readymade garment successfully.

"Diversification of exports beyond RMG is a big dilemma and the country will have to break this deadlock as Bangladesh has duty free market access in all the developed countries except the United States," he said, reports BSS.

The ERF, a $17.5 million-financial grant programme of the World Bank, was launched in January 2020 under the Export Competitiveness for Jobs (EC4J) project implemented by the commerce ministry with the aim of developing factory compliance and increasing competitiveness of four targeted export sectors of the country.

The sectors include leather and leather goods, footwear, plastics and light engineering products.

A total of 570 enterprises in the four sectors received financial and technical support under the programme.

"We're doing well domestically in many manufacturing sectors, but still we're not being able to gain success in the global market. Many of the issues are blocking our entry in the world export market," the Senior Commerce Secretary said.

Despite having duty free market access, Bangladesh would have to comply with the standard of global environmental, social and governance goals to diversify the country's exports, he added.

Tapan also said that the country really needed foreign direct investment (FDI) for the export diversification, but the pace of the inflow of FDI was not in the required level.

The Commerce Secretary also urged the development partners and the World Bank to support Bangladesh so that the country could get FDI in desired level.

Bd-pratidin English/Lutful Hoque