UNB, Dhaka :
Speakers at a webinar emphasised rebuilding the partnership among brands, suppliers, governments and international organisations as key to recovery of the apparel value chain.
The medium-term recovery of the global apparel value chain from the disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic has been set back by the prolonged demand slump.
Global imports of apparels during the period of January-August 2020 contracted by 23 percent compared to the same period in 2019.
Addressing medium-term challenges through national-level interventions alone will be difficult. Initiatives of major brands/buyers were limited to inventory smoothening, reshoring, and over-concentration of orders to a limited number of sources.
The recovery of many supplying countries has been slow, including that of Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Innovative ‘value chain-based solutions’ are required to help all the market players cope with the crisis, ensure rebound and smooth recovery and ultimately make the value chain resilient.
These observations emerged at an international webinar titled ‘Recovery of the Apparels Sector of Bangladesh and Sri Lanka: Is a Value-chain-based Solution Possible?’
The webinar was jointly organised by the Centre for
Policy Dialogue (CPD) and the Institute of Policy Studies of Sri Lanka (IPS) in partnership with Southern Voice on Tuesday.
CPD’s Chairman Professor Rehman Sobhan said ILO could consider playing an entrepreneurial role in bringing together international buying countries with supplying countries to restructure of global demand management.
He said tripartite exercise should be carried out, including government, employers, and workers to produce a mutually accommodating system of unemployment insurance to address not just the immediate impact of the COVID crisis but a longer-term crisis.
In the keynote presentation, CPD’s Research Director Dr Khondaker Golam Moazzem and Research Economist of IPS Kithmina Hewage stated that the study found that major sourcing countries have either reshored or over-concentrated to limited number of sourcing countries during the pandemic period.
There is limited level of initiatives of major market players to keep the suppliers of major sourcing countries and the world of work in uncertainty to address the medium-term challenges.
A major shift in the distribution of export orders by buyers during the Covid-19 period (January-June 2020) has deprived a number of major supplying countries, including Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.
