The parliamentary standing committee on commerce ministry on Wednesday blasted the ministry for failure in achieving export targets by commercial wings at Bangladesh missions abroad and asked the ministry to submit report detailing reasons for the failure.
The ministry informed the 42nd meeting of the committee that 10 of the 19 commercial wings at the missions abroad failed to achieve the export targets.
After the meeting, committee member Rumana Mahmud told reporters that the ministry informed them that more than half of the commercial wings at the missions abroad failed to achieve export targets and it was unacceptable.
‘We have asked the ministry to submit a report detailing the reasons for the failure in the next meeting of the committee,’ she said.
The ministry informed the committee that commercial wings at Washington DC, Berlin, London, Paris, Brussels, Tokyo, New Delhi, Beijing, Moscow, Tehran and Naypyidaw missions failed to achieve export targets in the last fiscal year.
For the current fiscal year, the ministry has set target of export worth $21,764 million through the 19 wings but only Madrid, Ottowa, Canberra, Dubai and Kuala Lumpur could achieve targets in the first quarter of the fiscal year.
The ministry attributed the failure to recession in Europe and North America, failure in branding Bangladeshi products in the global market, decrease in price and exporters’ failure in convincing international buyers of price and quality of their products.
The ministry also said that it had issued letters to the commercial wings, asking them to achieve the targets.
Meantime, the Export Promotion Bureau informed the committee that they had targeted to achieve exports worth around $28, 000.
The committee sources said that the meeting also discussed the issue of Destiny 2000 Ltd and asked the ministry to submit the report of inter-ministerial inquiry on the controversial company in the next meeting.
Committee member Tahura Ali was also present in the meeting which was presided over by committee chairman ABM Abul Kasem.