Japan has agreed in principle to further relax rules of origin norms for importing knitwear from Bangladesh, and modalities for the same are being worked out, foreign secretary M Shahidul Haque told reporters after his meeting with the visiting Japan’s deputy foreign minister Shinsuke Sugiyama in Dhaka.
In 2011, Japan had lowered the rules of origin for its GSP scheme for knitwear products from stage three to stage two, and now it has been agreed to relax these norms further to stage one.
Stage three level applied yarn-forward principle which was difficult for Bangladesh garment producers to comply with. Lowering the provision to stage one will mean knitwear made using imported fabric could also be exported to Japan under the GSP scheme.
Japan is currently the largest development partner of Bangladesh, and the relations between two countries have reached a new height following the visit of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to Tokyo last year and the return visit of her Japanese counterpart Shinzo Abe to Dhaka.
