Germany to provide 50m euros to country\\\'s textile sector

The German government will provide 50 million EUROs as financial assistance through the Bangladesh Bank (BB) to improve the country's textiles sector.
Besides, the EU country assured of increasing the prices of Bangladeshi readymade garment (RMG) items.
Tofail Ahmed, minister for commerce (MoC) told this after a view exchange meeting with Mr Hans-Joachim Fuchtel, state minister for Ministry of Development Cooperation of Germany at his office on Tuesday.  
Commerce minister and Mr. Hans-Joachim Fuchtel, signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on the day.  
During the MoU signing, Hedaytullah Al Mamun, Senior Secretary of the MoC, Mikail Shipar, Secretary, ministry of labour and employment and BGMEA President Md Atiqul Islam, among others, were present.  
Tofail Ahmed said "Germany will provide financial assistance to the country's 10 textile mills to develop their overall working environment. Under the assistance, they will provide counselling, training, technical assistance and address many other problems to make the textiles more viable.    
"Germany is our trusted friend. They have cooperated in our development efforts and also provided free market access to export our RMG items. We export goods worth US$ 5.0 billion to Germany every year. We are going to sign a MoU in the textile sector to enhance its capacity", Tofail Ahmed said.
Main agendas of the MoU are: improvement of supply chain and social and environmental standards in the textile sector. Country's ten textile mills will get financial assistance under the MoU. Besides, Germany signed another MoU with the Ministry of Labour and Employment.
Export to Germany from Bangladesh will increase under the MoU. Germany will emerge as the top importing country from Bangladesh in future, commerce minister said.   
Replying to a question, Hans-Joachim Fuchtel said, "I will urge the German buyers of Bangladeshi RMG goods to pay extra 1 Euro per pair of jeans in future.
"Next year, Germany wants to set up a website for consumers which will ensure transparency on supply chain. All kinds of information on export items will be included in details on the site.
He said, "Germany will not buy or import from any non-compliant factories' items and our buyers want more compliance in importing items from any country."
Earlier, Heather Cruden, outgoing Canada's high commissioner in Bangladesh met with the commerce minister before view exchange meeting at the ministry on the day.    
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