What will kill RMG in Bangladesh? Trans-Pacific Partnership or security fears? It may certainly be the second one and not the first. To begin with, the full text of the TPP is not yet available.

What does the US gain by not restoring the GSP facility? And what do we lose?

The recent visit of Chinese Commerce Minister Gao Hucheng to Dhaka no doubt reinvigorated the existing bilateral relations, laying

I am not in support of the fact that Bangladesh was left out of the GSP programme by the US. It smells of double standards.

It is very unfortunate. The world knows that conditions are getting better in Bangladesh. We are working closely with the government, the ILO, the EU and others.

Though US-Bangla interactions have evolved on a love-hate trajectory, an exception is made in relation to the GSP facility for Bangladesh. Dhaka's obsession with it has not been reciprocated by Washington.

The third Interna-tional Conference on Financing for Development recently convened in Ethiopia's capital, Addis Ababa.

GSP is always riddled with the subjectivity of the benefit granting countries. Indeed, trade analysts would recognise that this element of subjectivity is one of the fundamental problems with the GSP regimes.

Without branding, Bangladesh will only be just one more country bragging with an unsustainable RMG basket.

The rising crescendo of bickering and acrimony within Europe might seem to outsiders to be the inevitable result of the bitter endgame playing out between Greece and its creditors.

In order to maintain the competitive advantage, there is a tendency of putting downward pressure on workers' wages and benefits. In this context, for the workers' welfare, there is a critical need for reducing the cost of doing business in Bangladesh.

DESPITE ongoing efforts to catalyse global development cooperation, there have been significant obstacles to progress in recent years.