Dhaka: The cabinet on Monday approved the draft of the second amendment to the Asia-Pacific Trade Agreement (APTA) incorporating Mongolia as the new member, raising the total number of its member countries to seven.

The approval was given at the regular weekly meeting of the cabinet held at Bangladesh Secretariat with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in the chair.

Briefing reporters after the meeting, cabinet secretary Mohammad Shafiul Alam said the amendment to the oldest preferential trade agreement of the Asia pacific region is made to include Mongolia and rearrangement of the tariff regime under the agreement.

The Asia-Pacific Trade Agreement (APTA), previously known as the Bangkok Agreement was signed in 1975 and later renamed as APTA in 2005.

Now, Bangladesh, India, China, South Korea, Sri Lanka and Laos are the members of the agreement. The Membership of Mongolia is likely to be finalised at the next ministerial meeting of the APTA billed for January 13, 2017 in Bangkok.

The draft also finalised a new list of tariff regime under the agreement.

Under the agreement, Bangladesh generally gives 10-70 percent duty free access to 598 items from APTA countries in addition 20-50 percent concession to four more items from LDCs.

As per the agreement, China gives 5 to 100 percent duty-free access to 2191 items of APTA countries while India gives five to 100 percent duty free access to 3,334 items under the agreement.

The cabinet secretary said the current RMG sector situation came up for discussions at the cabinet meeting and it welcomed the resumption of operation in all garment factories in Ashulia.

The cabinet called for taking concerted efforts to resolve the problems of the workers and owners of the factories.

The cabinet was also informed that almost all the 500 closed factories were opened today with some 80-90 percent workers joining their works.

It also noted that the county incurs hundreds of crores of Taka every day if the RMG factories remain closed.

Ministers and State Ministers, secretaries concerned attended the meeting.