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The Bangladesh and Indian customs intelligence began the first-ever Director General (DG)-level talks in Dhaka on Sunday, focusing on building an institutional framework to check illegal trade, exchange more information and promote formal bilateral business.
DG of Bangladesh Customs Intelligence and Investigation Directorate (CIID) Dr Sahidul Islam has been leading the 13-member Bangladesh delegation while DG of Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) of India Debi Prasad Dash the six-member Indian delegation in the two-day talks at a city hotel.
Both the sides will mainly discuss ways to curb smuggling of gold, fake currency, wildlife and drugs.
Speaking as chief guest at the inaugural ceremony, National Board of Revenue (NBR) member Khandakar Aminur Rahman said both the countries need to share a lot of information as bilateral trade has almost reached US$10 billion.
"The trade between the two countries is touching $10 billion. We need to exchange a lot of information now. Both the administrations are concerned about illegal trade, smuggling, money laundering and national security," he said.
"Currently we exchange information regarding both export and import valued at US$15,000 or over with India for five items under the South Asia Subregional Economic Cooperation (SASEC)," he said, adding that the value threshold should be reduced.
"The value of most of our trade with India is below $15,000. If the present value threshold for exchange of information is fixed at a lower level, we could share more export-import data," he said.
"We want to establish a vibrant trade community by increasing trade among the South Asian countries. So, we need to increase cooperation and exchange of data to this end," he added.
DRI Director General Debi Prasad Dash said both the sides are here in talks to facilitate legal trade.
He said India shares the largest border with Bangladesh. So, it is necessary for the two nations to hold talks to keep a check on cross-border trade and proactively help each other in exchanging trade-related information.
He also said smuggling across the India-Bangladesh border is a regular phenomenon. There have been a significant number of smuggling cases involving gold, fake Indian currency, wildlife, commercial goods, drugs etc.
"We will facilitate transparent trade by checking illegal trade for the good of both the countries," he added.
Later, talking to reporters on the sideline of the inaugural ceremony, Debi Prasad said: "We have no idea about how big is illegal or informal trade, as we don't exchange all the information now."
This talks will help both countries identify existing problems in the cross-border trade, he said.
"This is going to lay a foundation for institutional framework where we can talk from time to time and resolve our problems," he added.
He also said there has to be a perfect risk management system in place to supervise, as both the countries do not check every consignment and release most of them unchecked.
About cattle smuggling, he said the number of such cases has almost come to zero.
"The number of seizures of illegal cows has now dropped to zero level since October 2018. Earlier, we used to seize 7,000 or 8,000 cows a year," he said.
Speaking at the inaugural session, Director General of CIID Dr Sahidul Islam said there are longstanding allegations of smuggling, over-invoicing and under-invoicing by unscrupulous businessmen of both the countries.
The talks will open up new avenues of cooperation, enabling both the sides to check illegal trade, he said.
A number of agreements will be signed during the talks for more cooperation between the two countries, he added.
The Indian delegation members include DRI Chief additional DG Bandana Deori, First secretary of Indian High Commission in Kathmandu Prabhjeet Singh Gulati, Deputy Director Rakesh Dahiya, Deputy Director Swati Bhanwala and Commerce Secretary of Indian High Commission in Dhaka Shishir Kothari.
The Bangladesh delegation members include Additional Director General Abdul Hakim, Additional Commissioner of Rangpur Customs Abdul Mannan Sardar and Additional DG Shamima Akter and first secretary of NBR Gias Kamal.