Bangladesh wants to boost cattle trade with India

Risingbd Desk: The Bangladesh government is developing proposals to boost the Bangladesh-India cattle trade by allowing sales at border markets (called haats), after Indian authorities curbed livestock smuggling.

A senior commerce ministry official said that a new memorandum of understanding had been drafted with the goal of renewing the agreement later this year. Crucially, Bangladesh wants the new version to allow cattle trades at four border haats.

“We’ve internally decided to include cattle in the list of products for trading at border markets,” said Monoj Kumar Roy, an additional secretary (senior official) at the ministry. “But it’s not a tradeable product in India. It’s sensitive.”

He added that his ministry was awaiting reassurance from the ministry of foreign affairs to make sure that the proposal was “diplomatically decent” before it was proposed to New Delhi.

Pushing the government
Robiul Alam, secretary general of the Bangladesh Meat Traders Association, said his group had been pushing the government for cattle trading at border markets. And he predicted that India would never stop cattle trade altogether, as some of its states, including West Bengal, heavily rely on livestock rearing.

He noted that Indian traders still make money from selling cattle-sourced beef (as well as buffalo): “Slaughtering cows is more profitable than trade in live animals,” he said.

Chanda hoped Indian traders would boost exports before the religious feast and said that, already, cattle exports from Myanmar, with which Bangladesh also shares a land border, have started being supplied. He said: “All animals crossing borders will be quarantined by our veterinary physicians to ensure that cattle population is disease-free.”

But Dhaka’s proposal may be cold-shouldered by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government, which curbed the smuggling of livestock into Bangladesh in April.

Dr Moazzem said: “[The] development of a formal channel for cross border trade of cattle will significantly slash illegal trades...”
Senior secretary of the commerce ministry Hedayetullah Al Mamoon said more discussions on the issue were still planned. “The proposal has yet to take shape,” he said. “It’s a bilateral issue.” But he declined to offer further details.

Source: GlobalMeatNews

Risingbd/Sept 2, 2015/Mukul