Punjabi prices higher this year
August 21, 2010
The retail price of traditional punjabi – the first choice of Muslim males of all ages for the Eid festival – has increased sharply well ahead of Eid-ul-Fitr this year. Traders blamed higher production costs.
Sewing up in garments sector
August 10, 2010
IT is quite unfortunate that several thousand garment workers rampaged through different parts of the capital and Gazipur on July 30, rejecting the new wage structure and demanding Tk.5,000 as minimum wage from August. The angry workers vandalised vehicles and around 200 business establishments, including several garment factories, resulting in injury of at least 25 people including five police.
Machinery suppliers see better prospect for Bangladesh apparel
February 9, 2010
A brighter future for Bangladesh in global apparel business is ahead, as international textile machinery suppliers observed yesterday.
Pointing to the significant decline in demand for high-end garment products amid financial crisis worldwide, Denise Lee, vice-president of Flying Tiger, a Taiwan-based knit machinery supplying company and a participant, told the inaugural of an international fair: “Bangladesh can supply garment items at a low price due to some advantages like cheap and available labour besides the capacity of making basic items.”
The annual seventh Dhaka International Textile and Garments Machinery Exhibition 2010 will continue for four days at Bangabandhu International Conference Centre,
Like Lee, many a participant points to the fact that countries like China, Turkey, India and Pakistan are losing competitiveness for higher wages to workers and shifting of production to the high-end garment items.
Pointing her finger at the exhibition, Lee also said such a mega event is also a reflection on how Bangladesh’s garment makers are progressing.
The speakers, particularly representatives from the firms participating, said Bangladesh, being the third largest supplier of garment products, followed by China and Turkey, has a chance to be second in near future if the potentials could be properly tapped.
But, the government should create an investment- friendly environment and build infrastructures for smooth running of business, they added.
Chan Chao International Company Ltd, a Taiwan based event management company, organised the fair where 570 companies from 30 countries are showcasing their machineries in 750 stalls.
In his inaugural speech, Abdul Latif Siddique, textiles and jute minister, asked the apparel manufacturers to shift their focus to production of value added items from the basic items to create more profit and more employment.
Dilip Barua, industries minister, said a wider scope for more investment has been enshrined in the upcoming industrial policy.
Abdul Hai Sarker, president of Bangladesh Textile Mills Association, also the co-organiser of the fair, said the industrial sector is now hit hard by the low pressure of gas.
“As a result, we could not exploit the potentials of the sector,” Sarker added.
Bangladeshi apparels woo Japan
February 9, 2010
Apparel exporters’ dream to make in-road into Japanese market received a big boost after two leading Tokyo firms said they would place major orders next year, an industry leader said Friday.
Marubeni Corporation, one of the top ten Japanese conglomerates, said it would buy apparel worth US$100 million while officials of Shimamura, the second largest textile retailer in Japan, have confirmed that they would also place a multi-million dollar order.
President of Bangladesh Knitwear Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BKMEA) Fazlul Hoque said the orders reflect growing Japanese confidence in Bangladeshi garments — one of a very few things to cheer about during global recession.
The orders have come as Bangladeshi apparel exports were hit by the biggest quarterly drop in a decade, with global recession drying up orders from traditional markets in North America and Europe.
“Marubeni Corporation e-mailed us on Thursday and said it would buy Bangladeshi apparels worth $100 million in 2010,” Hoque said. “It’s a very good news for us as it shows that our apparels have wooed top Japanese firms.”
The BKMEA president said Marubeni has been buying Bangladeshi products in a limited scale in the last six months. The new order is the biggest being placed by any Japanese company.
The Marubeni order alone is twice the amount Bangladeshi garment manufacturers exported to Japan, the world’s second largest economy, in the 2008-9 financial year.
The country shipped garments worth $12.3 billion last year, with the US and European Union accounting for more than 90 per cent of the purchase, and Japan making up 0.005 per cent.
Japan is the world’s fourth largest textile market and imports apparel worth over $10 billion a year, with bulk of the shipment coming from South-east Asian countries such as China, Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines.
In recent years, Tokyo firms have diversified their import markets, as Chinese products have become costlier exerting pressure on the recession-hit Japanese consumers.
Hoque led three delegations to Japan since late last year, hoping to convert Japanese buyers who had negative impression about Bangladeshi products.
“They used to think that we don’t produce apparel as goods as China. But since last year, it dawned on them that our products can match those of China and plus they are 20 percent cheaper,” he said.
Thanks to intensive BKMEA marketing campaign, things have started to change since the fifth Knitexpo in 2008 when a handful of Japanese companies visited the largest Bangladeshi knitwear exposition and were wowed by standards here.
In the sixth edition of the knitexpo held last month, more than 50 Japanese retailers and textile manufacturers turned up, with some of them engaging in serious joint venture talks with their Bangladeshi counterparts while others placing orders for a range of items.
The BKMEA president said Bangladesh has finally gained serious attention of Japanese companies, which are very nagging about quality and labour standards of factories.
The president of top Japanese retailer Shimamura last week led a six-member team to Bangladesh and visited two factories in Savar to place large-scale orders.
“They are impressed with our quality and they have confirmed to buy a huge amount of products from us,” he said.
Shimamura Co Ltd has 1500 showrooms in Japan and they import $2.0 billion apparel products mainly from South-East Asia.
Hoque added that another top Japanese conglomerate, Mitsui Co, has shown eagerness to buy Bangladeshi goods and asked for the facts and figures of apparel sector here.
Toyota optimistic about
October 3, 2009
Toyota Motor’s new president Akio Toyoda said today he is optimistic about prospects for the ailing global auto industry but warned that the yen’s recent surge may delay its recovery.
The grandson of the company’s founder confirmed that, for this year, the US and Japanese auto markets are on course for sizable drops in sales in the wake of the global financial crisis.
‘But (sales) will certainly pick up in the long run,’ Toyoda, 53, who took the top job in June, told a news conference.
China jails Windows software pirates
September 28, 2009
A court in eastern China has sentenced four people to up to three-and-a-half years in prison for selling bootleg versions of Microsoft’s Windows XP software, court officials said Friday.
Brazilian cotton growers to explore Bangladesh market
September 28, 2009
A five member delegation of AMPA – The Cotton Growers’ Association of Mato Grosso- Brazil, visited Dhaka last week to explore local market.
During the visit, the
Bangladesh’s share in US RMG market widens
July 21, 2009
Bangladesh’s share in the US apparel market is getting larger as cheap clothing (basic garment items) sales in that market are increasing in global recession, market operators said.
Recession-hit retailers in the US and Europe are purchasing garments from Bangladesh in enhanced volume as the cost of the item is less here because of cheap labour and the better state of economy, reported some Indian dailies recently.
The strong presence of locally made garment items in US market, the largest importer, has surpassed even India, a stronger competitor, for the first time.
Bangladesh has now taken the fifth position, which was previously occupied by India, on the list of largest garment-exporting countries to the US.
While Bangladesh’s share increased by 10 per cent, India’s share went down by 3 percent in the US market in August 2008, as some newspapers in India report.
The US imports of knitwear and woven garment from Bangladesh during July-December 2008 were more than $558 million and $1.21 billion respectively, according to the Export Promotion Bureau (EPB) data.
USITC (United States International Trade Commission) says the total import of knitwear from the world in the US was 1.56 percent down during June-December in 2008, whereas knitwear imports from Bangladesh marked a 24.87 rise in the same period.
When global woven imports in the US for this period were 3.72 percent down, the item’s import from Bangladesh increased by 12.02 percent.
The 5.1 percent rise in February 2009 retail sales of Wal-Mart, globally known for cheap clothing, reflects a strong presence of Bangladesh RMG products in the US. However, the entire US retail sales of clothing marked a 2 percent drop during July-November in 2008, compared to the same period a year earlier.
The USITC data show a 5.60 percent decline in the US imports of knitwear from Cambodia in the July-December period, 4.60 percent increase from China, 0.13 percent decline from India, 12.56 percent increase from Indonesia, 2.38 percent decline from Pakistan, 0.06 percent increase from Sri Lanka, 10.93 percent decline from Thailand and 23.56 percent increase from Vietnam.
During the same period, the import of woven items by US from Cambodia declined by 6.30 percent, 5.13 percent increased from China, 9.51 percent declined from India, 8.25 percent declined from Indonesia, 4.33 percent increased from Pakistan, 3.85 percent declined from Sri Lanka, 6.57 percent declined from Thailand and 7.79 percent increased from Vietnam.
US imports more than US$70 billion garment items annually from all over the world. The world’s export market of readymade garment (RMG) items is $410billion where Bangladesh’s market share is only 2.0 percent. Meanwhile, EPB data show that Bangladesh’s RMG exports reached US$6.05 billion during the first half of the current fiscal year 2008-09, registering a 24.18 percent growth. Of the total export target, $12.267 billion has been fixed for the two main sub-sectors of RMG.
Of this amount, US$6.583 billion is for knitwear, 19 percent up from its last year’s export performance, and $5.684 billion for woven, 10 percent up from the last year’s figure. Bangladesh fetched $10.7 billion from RMG exports in the same period of 2007-08.
BKMEA President Fazlul Hoque said Bangladesh has large factories than many other countries and they are more productive and have low labour cost, which is helping them in attracting buyers from the US and Europe.
Bangladesh is the only country that can produce textile items at least 20-30 percent cheaper than China, Hoque said.
“We are more competitive than others, as we have cheap labour, less production costs and we could establish strong capacity base of textile and clothing items,” said the chief of the Bangladesh Knitwear Manufacturers and Exporters Association.
Canada urges Bangladesh to boost trade volume
May 24, 2009
Canadian High Commissioner in Dhaka Robert McDougall urged yesterday the Bangladeshi entrepreneurs to expand the trade volume with the North American country by tapping the full potential of the local businesses. McDougall said of the total exported items from Bangladesh to Canada, a duty-free market for the country since 2003, 95 percent include garment items. “Bangladesh’s success in garment and textile exports should spread to other sectors in Canada,” he said at a seminar on “Trade and Investment-Canada Bangladesh Initiatives” at Dhaka Chamber of Commerce and Industry (DCCI) office in the capital. Read more
Production costs soar in power crisis: BKMEA
May 10, 2009
The use of diesel due to constant power outages has increased production costs in the knitwear sector by 20 percent, said BKMEA President Fazlul Hoque yesterday. “The power situation turned so bad that outages continue through half of the factories’ total production period,” Hoque said. “The production cost is increasing significantly due to the power and energy crises in the factories as the owners will have to depend on diesel,” Hoque said. On top of that, the prices of apparel items are declining because of global recession, he told a meeting with State Minister for Power and Energy Shamsul Haque Tuku at his secretariat office. Read more