Kazi Zahidul Hasan :
Bangladesh earned $23.98 billion from exports of ready-made garments in the first seven months of the current 2021-22 fiscal year, up 30.30 per cent year-on-year, according to an official data.
During July-January of the current 2021-22 fiscal year, the knitwear garment export rose 32.89 per cent year-on-year to $13.27 billion and the woven garment export registered an increase of 27.23 per cent to $10.71 billion, the Export Promotion Bureau (EPB) data posted on its website showed.
The increase was attributed to a sustained recovery in global trade and demand from key external markets like the US and the European Union (EU) which account for more than 70 per cent of the global RMG exports of Bangladesh.
Bangladesh, a global RMG export powerhouse, set its export goal for the 2021-22 fiscal year at $43.50 billion, including $35.14 billion from garment products, which usually account for over 80 per cent of the national shipment in a year.
“I hope the RMG export will surpass the target. If the current trend continues, we will be able to earn $40 billion from apparel exports in this fiscal year,” FaruqueHassan, President of Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA) told The New Nation on Monday.
He says, “The performance of apparel shipments was highly impressive during July-January this fiscal and it mainly happened due to shifting of additional work orders from its key competitors, such as Vietnam, India and Myanmar.”
When asked, FaruqueHassan said, “We’re not worried about the sanction on some officials of the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) as that move has not yet affected apparel shipment to the USA.”
Rejecting the newspapers reports that the US sanction on RAB officials is likely to affect garment export to different countries, particularly in the UK and in the US, he said, “I wondered by such ‘speculative’ reports as American authority imposed sanction on few individuals, not on the country.”
Besides, some local newspapers have reported that a buyer has from the UK attached a separate condition in the letter of credit (LC) which might have a bad impact on payment of the shipped garment items.
“In my knowledge, no buyer included such a condition in LC and even no exporter did lodge any complaint with the BGMEA yetin this regard,” said Hassan, adding, “It might be a ‘smear’ campaign when our export is growing to all major destinations.”
He, however, said, our export to the US has been growing significantly as demands for localapparel items remains high in that particular market.
Bangladesh’s apparel exports to the US market increased by 30.68 per cent to $6.3 billion during January –November period of the last calendar year (2021), according to the Office of Textiles and Apparel (OTEXA), the United States of America.
“In fact, our apparel exports to the US market have already crossed $7.0 billion mark if we calculate the export figure of December 2021. We will be able to earn $10 billion from exports of ready-made garment (RMG) products to the US at the end of calendar year 2022 if the current momentum of the US economy continues defying the spread of Omicron,” hoped Hassan.
The US economy created nearly half a million jobs last month despite the Omicron wave, the country’s Labor Department reported on Friday, while wages continued to rise rapidly.
The surprisingly strong employment report for January confirmed that the US economy entered 2022 with a great deal of momentum.
“Spending by Americans is expected to increase in the months to come taking advantage of strong comeback of the US economy. In this case, Bangladeshi apparel exporterswill see more orders coming from the US market.”
Replying to another question, Hassan said, “I would just reiterate the US sanctions on RAB’s current and former officials would not impact bilateral trade relations between Dhaka and Washington.”
Earlier, Bangladeshi readymade garment manufacturers set a goal to reach $50 billion export by 2021, despite several challenges that lie ahead of them.
“We will not be able to attain the target this year. But we’re hopeful to achieve the target by the end of next fiscal year capitalising the industrial restructuring as well as product and market diversification,” said Faruque Hassan
Bangladesh earned $31.45 billion from exports of apparel products in the 2020-21 fiscal year, contributing to 81.16 per cent of its total outbound shipments.
In the 2019-20 fiscal year, the country fetched $27.94 billion from the shipments of RMG products.
As of now, Bangladeshis the world’ssecond-largest apparelexporter, justbehindChina.
The country’s apparel manufacturing industry contributes approximately 12 per cent of the national GDP, with employing four million workers.
