RMG export to new destinations records 200pc rise

The country witnessed over 200 per cent growth in the export of readymade garments (RMG) to 11 new destinations in the first eight months of the current fiscal, BGMEA sources said. The new destinations are South Africa, Brazil, Australia, Japan, Chili, China, India, South Korea, Mexico, Russia and Turkey. Leaders of the Bangladesh Garments Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA) said they are hopeful of exporting garment products around US$16 billion this fiscal and $20 billion annually in the next three years. Talking to BSS, BGMEA President M Shariful Islam Mohiuddin, attributed three factors that helped achieved higher growth of RMG export to 11 new destinations. They are: Aggressive penetration and buyers' confidence in Bangladesh as a vital outsourcing country and the government stimulus package. He favoured opening more missions in the potential destinations and exchanging trade delegations for the further growth of the sector. Although the garments industry is said to be the second largest outsourcing destination in the world, Bangladesh occupies only 5.0 per cent of the total world consumption, he added. The BGMEA president said the booming sector does not require any foreign direct investment (FDI) as 25 per cent capacity of the industry still remains idle. Rather, he said, foreign investors who are willing to invest in the sector could do so only in the backward linkage industry. He, however, urged the government for resolving the power and gas problems immediately to give a further boost to the sector. President of Bangladesh Exporters Association (BEA) Abdus Salam Murshedi said the stimulus package offered by the government for the garments exporters to offset the global financial recession led to the higher growth in export to 11 new destinations. As many as 3.50 million workers, 80 per cent of them women, are now employed in the small, medium and large units of the RMG sector fetching $14 billion to the country's copper, industry people said.