Business Desk :
The stage is set for Bangladesh’s cotton imports to cross the 9 million bales mark this year for the first time despite the pandemic’s severe fallout in the global supply chain because of a sudden rise in demand for yarn and fabrics from local garment exporters.
In the 2021 calendar year, Bangladesh imported 8.5 million bales of cotton spending more than $3 billion. One bale equals 480 pounds or 218 kilogrammes (kg). As export of Bangladeshi garment items has risen significantly with the reopening of global economies, cotton imports will surely surge.
Between July and December, the first six months of the current fiscal year, garment export grew by 28.02 per cent year-on-year to $19.90 billion.
Of the amount, $11.16 billion came from knitwear, which witnessed a 30.91 per cent rise year-on-year. The remaining $8.73 billion came from woven, which is also a 24.50 per cent rise year-on-year.
“The upward trend of garment export will continue up to June this year as we booked a large volume of work orders,” said Faruque Hassan, president of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA), last week.
“We have already made payments of the letters of credit for importing the cotton,” said Mohammad Ali Khokon, president of Bangladesh Textile Mills Association (BTMA), the platform of the primary textile sector and cotton millers.
“We are expecting a rush in import of cotton in March and April this year and again a chaos in the port because of congestion,” he said.
Khokon reiterated complaints that vessels of international shipping lines were reluctant to come to the country’s premier Chattogram port because of long turnaround times due to congestion and a shortage of containers.
The BTMA president was talking to a group of journalists at his association office in Dhaka to share the current situation of the textile industry, citing the growing demand for yarn and fabrics.
Khokon also said currently the local spinners can meet 90 per cent of the knitwear sector’s demand for raw materials but only 40 per cent of that of the woven sector.
