Addressing a conference here, visiting Bangladesh Foreign Minister M Morshed Khan said the absence of standardised quality control hampers bilateral trade.

Khan expressed unhappiness over Indian government's ordering anti-dumping probe into import of lead acid batteries worth Tk 3 crore and said "this sent a wrong signal" to the world business community.

He also said that Bangladesh's request for duty concession from India on 25 categories of goods had been pending for a long time.

"In fact, in 1995 the then Commerce Minister P Chidambaram had promised me that the circular granting the concession will be issued by the time you return to Dhaka. But there is no sign of that circular."

On the other hand, he said, Bangladesh government cleared the Indian pharmaceutical major Sun Pharma's permission for manufacturing drugs in Bangladesh "bypassing the legal requirement" of obtaining permission for doing so in view of a flourishing domestic pharmaceutical sector.

The Foreign Minister said Bangladesh opened its doors not only to India but also to other countries out of "our conviction on reforms and globalisation."

Admitting that there were para-tariff and non-tariff barriers in trade between the two countries, he said "the biggest barrier however is the mindset."

Stating that he had expected faster progress in the last six months since the framework of agreement for Safta was signed in Islamabad this January, Khan said Saarc countries "are still suffering from the legacy of mindset and the fear of the unknown".

He suggested closer co-operation among India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, saying "We must establish our new identity of being excellent South Asians. If it is not done today, tomorrow will be too late."

The foreign minister said Saarc countries should set itself the task of increasing intra-region trade from the present three to 20 percent in a time-bound manner.

Khan spoke about a pan-Asian body like Nafta and said if two percent of GDP of the countries spanning from Turkey to Japan is pooled into a fund, it will be two and half times more than the IMF kitty.