Search the Internet          Tips  Sites: Finance, Investment

World Bank urges Bangladesh to sell gas to India

The World Bank has asked Bangladesh to examine the option of exporting natural gas to India to offset the trade gap between the two countries.

"Backtracking from reforms to address the imbalance (with India) could be further damaging," the Bank's country director Frederick Temple cautioned Bangladesh on Sunday during a monthly meeting of Foreign Investors Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

However, Temple said, the trade gap is necessarily not harmful as Dhaka's overall external trade balance were on the right track and sustainable.

"The deficit with India should not worry Bangladesh, as New Delhi remained a low cost source for critical raw material and consumer goods for it," Temple was quoted as saying by the Bangladesh Observer newspaper on Monday.

Bangladesh has shied away from selling its huge surplus gas to India despite international persuasion as the issue got strongly entrenched in domestic politics over the years.

Leaders of Awami League and Bangladesh Nationalist Party tactfully avoided any commitment to sell gas to India prior to polls scheduled to be held on October one, the paper said.

In 1999, India's export volume to Bangladesh was about $3.077 billion, while its imports from Dhaka were only 336 million dollars, the paper said.

Tell us what you think of this report