Kazi Zahidul Hasan :
Local garment manufacturers are desperately moving forward to explore non-traditional export markets following fall in their shipments to major global markets, specially in the US and the European Union (EU), insiders said.
They said Bangladesh’s apparel exports growth to the US and the EU are showing signs of gradual fall for the last couple of years as the western buyers raised safety concern after the deadly disaster of Rana
Plaza, Tazreen Fashion fire and political unrest in the country. “Western buyers are apparently shifting focus from Bangladesh to other garment producing countries due to the above mentioned factors resulting a gradual fall in shipment growth to the major export destinations,” M Shahidullah Azim, Vice-President of Bangladesh Garments Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA) told The New Nation on Monday.
Shahidullah Azim mentioned that Bangladeshi manufacturers are facing tough competition in the global arena due rising production cost here.
“This also discourages the buyers to placing orders in Bangladesh hurting the local industry,” he added.
He further said that such a shift of the buyers forced us to find alternative export destinations to make the local garment industry sustainable as well as maintain export growth.
“Initially, we have targeted 25 new destinations considering their export potential. We have already received good response from the buyers of these countries,” he noted.
These markets include India, Japan, China, South Korea, Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Chili, Russia, Australia, South Africa and Turkey.
Referring to an official figure, he said, Bangladesh’s apparel export to the above mentioned countries stood at $3.60 billion in the last fiscal, showing an impressive growth of 21.15 per cent.
When asked, he said, now we are facing an uphill task to maintain the export growth in key markets. But, if we can penetrate the new markets successfully, it will help the local industry to absorb future shocks coming from the key markets.
He, however, sought the government support to explore the new export destinations.
The BGMEA leader stressed the need for opening of Bangladeshi missions in some of these countries and establish money transaction channel to smoothly handling export procedures there.
According to the Export Promotion Bureau (EPB) and BGMEA statistics, Bangladesh’s apparel export to the US witnessed 2.07 per negative growth in the fiscal 2012-13 and it was 2.90 per cent in the fiscal 2013-14. Bangladesh shipped garments worth $5.14 billion to the US in the last fiscal.
Besides, apparel export growth to the EU markets was 8.13 per cent in the fiscal 2012-13 and it stood 17.35 per cent in the fiscal 2013-14.
But, the latest EPB data showed that apparel export to the US market went to negative territory (-0.81 per cent) during the July-March period of the current fiscal and the growth in the EU markets went down to 4.39 per cent during the same period. Bangladesh earned $14.74 billion from exporting apparels to the EU markets in the fiscal 2013-14.
