Staff Reporter :
The entrepreneurs of the readymade garment sector think that they are depriving ethical price of their products despite the sector attained second position in the global ethical auditing evaluation list.
A report titled “2020 in Review: Global Trade Covid Disruption Shows Transformations in Consumption Habits and Rampant Ethical, as China Sourcing Beats the Odds” ranked Bangladesh second as per their evaluation list, they said.
However, Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA) President Faruque Hassan said that the sector can get ethical price by grabbing the growing global market of man-made fibre (MMF) textiles.
“Shifting to non-cotton fibre based items, currently 75 per cent global market share, will help to attain the price and to add at least $ 2 billion export earnings of in the country annually,” the BGMEA president told the journalists at his office in the city on Tuesday. “If the government provides 10 per cent cash incentive on export of non-cotton based garment for next five years, we will be able to cash up the opportunity,” Faruque said.
“Additionally, it will help to create huge amount of private investment and to generate employment in the country that will contribute to the overall economy,” the BGMEA chief said.
“There is no private investment in the country in the last couple of years. The investors, operating business entities, are struggling to survive. Under this situation, the government support is essential at the moment for the sector,” he said.
The share of MMF has been steadily increasing internationally due to the inherent limitations of growth of cotton and other natural items.
The BGMEA President said they did not ask for reduction of any tax this time but only wanted continuation of those facilities that are already in place.
He said MMF-based textile trade volume stood $150 billion in 2017 while Bangladesh’s share was only 5 against the country’s competitor Vietnam’s share 10 per cent.
The BGMEA president said though there was investment in the non-cotton or MMF sector in the past, it was mainly capital investment and technology-based investment.
The BGMEA president said over the past decade, Bangladesh’s RMG sector has made impressive progress in tackling the challenges of growth-particularly in diversifying customers and products, improving supplier and workforce performance, and strengthening compliance and sustainability.
“To cope with the upcoming changes in fashion trends, the BGMEA will launch “Centre of Innovation and Efficiency within the next three months,” he said.
Bangladesh exported $34.13 billion worth of RMG products in the 2018-19 fiscal while the country’s earnings from garment export in the 2019-20 fiscal declined to $27.83 billion. After the third quarter of fiscal 2020-21, export earnings from the garment products stood at $23.49 billion.
