WHILE the country`s prime export item Readymade Garments (RMG) sector crumbling to survive with the domestic unfavourable business climate and deteriorating law and order situation and other external factors like the cancellation of GSP facility in US markets and Brexit fall-outs, the RMG is perhaps going to face another race with the South Asian giant India. Referring to a confidential report of the Home Ministry, a vernacular daily has reported that India has set to allocate Tk. 6000 crore as a subsidiary for RMG for fulfilling USD 43 billion export to US market by 2018. The aggressive marketing policy of India to take the existing Bangladesh market in EU and USA in their grip may bring a disaster in the export market share of Bangladesh globally as well as subsequently impact the employment situation and the total economy. If the government, which claims to be too friendly with the Indian administration and the concerned business community fail to address the impending challenges quickly and qualitatively, the ambitions target to export USD 50 billion by 2021 would be hampered.
Apart from the GSP cancellation and spate of attacks on RMG buyers and foreigners in Bangladesh, the RMG sector, the 83 percent contributor to total export earnings, has been experiencing severe electricity and gas crisis. Besides, the tariff hike of electricity and gas has cut the turnover of the RMG sector, despite the exporters are thriving to catch the unwrapped markets in Western world capitalising on cheap labour. With the increasing trend of production costs, the incidents of militant attacks that blurred the country’s image severely and other unspecified external influences, the business people instead of increasing rate are more trendy in decreasing the price to maintain the market stronghold.
Fear of terror among the garment buyers about militant attacks and ineptness of the government to instill security at Ports, the USA, UK and other EU countries since the last year repeatedly issued security red alert for Dhaka, in response to which Dhaka swiftly installed the security compliance to save the situation.
With all these odds, RMG sector as a whole is still surviving at a thrash-hold level. But now they are apprehending fresh threat from the Indian side. Indian businesses are thriving hard through intense lobbying to capture considerable share of Bangladesh’s Global market. This Indian business aggression is unethical and goes against the WTO rules.
The government should take the matter seriously, and the RMG business leaders should go all out to counter the Indian aggression.
