Exporters count losses for airport inefficiency

Bangladesh has been losing more than $1 billion worth of apparel business every year due to inefficiency of the airport authority as their delayed release of samples irks Western retailers, said the BGMEA president yesterday.

Due to the fast pace of trend cycles nowadays, the retailers send garment samples to manufacturers in Bangladesh frequently through expensive air shipments and they expect quick execution of the work orders.

“But the manufacturers do not get the samples from the airport timely,” said Siddiqur Rahman, president of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association, at a press conference at its office in Dhaka.

The samples from the airport are supposed to be received within 24 hours but it takes more than 10 days, he said.

And there have been incidents of theft too from the cargo village of the airport as important goods and documents are left unattended by the airport authority.

“These kinds of irresponsible behaviour have irked the international retailers,” Rahman said.

They are either shifting work orders to other countries or delaying in placing orders or paying less to manufacturers.

“These inefficiencies have been costing us business.”

The civil aviation and airport authorities have been trying to improve security and efficiency in handling of goods at the airport since last year as some countries like the UK, Germany and Australia imposed a ban on direct cargo shipments from Dhaka. Since then, Bangladesh has failed to improve the airport situation -- and the European Union came up with its own ban recently. The EU has placed an embargo on direct cargo flights from Dhaka to all 28 of its member nations.

As a result, any cargo flight from Dhaka needs to be re-screened at a third country, preferably the UAE, Turkey, Thailand and Qatar.

This has increased the cost of business and lengthened the lead time more for garment manufacturers, who are jostling for more work orders to hit $50 billion in exports by 2021.

“Last week a group of foreign buyers met me and complained about the inefficiency of the airport. We want immediate improvement of Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport and the Chittagong port,” Rahman said.

Regarding the current situation of the garment business, he said the average export growth of garment was 13 percent over the last 10 years, but it has crashed to lower than 2.50 percent in the first 11 months of the fiscal year due to a silent recession in Europe.

Garment exporters earned $23.13 billion in the July-April period of fiscal 2016-17, down 2.21 percent year-on-year, according to data from the Export Promotion Bureau.

“The export earnings will be more dismal in the next few months.”

The BGMEA chief claimed that all the factory owners have already paid the workers. The workers started to leave for their villages from yesterday to celebrate Eid-ul-Fitr.

Only 35 garment factories were struggling to clear its payroll as they are going through financial hardship. “But in the end they were bound to pay the workers timely.”

He said the workers were demanding salaries for the entire month of June, but the owners managed to pay them for 15-20 days.

A total of 3,100 factories under the BGMEA and the Bangladesh Knitwear Manufacturers and Exporters Association have paid the workers on time, Rahman added.