The Bangladesh government will not extend the stay of Accord and Alliance beyond the expiry of their current tenure in June 2018, said Commerce Minister Tofail Ahmed. According to the minister, the Accord and the Alliance are not present anywhere else in the world. They will not be here in Bangladesh after 2018. The Accord and Alliance are legally binding agreements signed by a total of 228 foreign retailers in the aftermath of the Rana Plaza collapse in 2013 to fix the electrical, fire and structural faults in the garment factories from which they source.

The tenures of Accord, a platform of 200 Europe-based retailers, and Alliance, another platform of 28 North American retailers, will come to an end in June 2018. After their departure, the proposed remediation coordination cell will monitor the safety progress of the structures, said a senior official of the labour and employment ministry. The two platforms have inspected a total of 2,198 factories so far, according to Ahmed.