Garment export may recover by Oct: BGMEA

Garment export might make a full recovery to pre-pandemic levels by October this year as shipments are rebounding with the reopening of Western retail stores, said the BGMEA president yesterday.

Between July and April of the current fiscal year, receipts were up 6.24 per cent year-on-year to $26 billion, showing the resilience of the industry amidst the fallouts of Covid-19.

Of the sum, $13.99 billion came from knitwear, which registered 15.34 per cent year-on-year growth. Earnings from woven fell 2.71 per cent to $12 billion.

Knitwear shipment is increasing as people are spending more time indoors. Because of the pandemic, demand for woven garment, such as formal shirts and trousers, has fallen. Woven exports declined by more than 10 per cent in most months over the past one year.

April saw the lowest decline, meaning now the segment is rebounding thanks to gradual reopening of stores and offices.

"The trend of garment shipment is good with the rise in demand in the Western world," said Faruque Hassan, president of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA), in a press briefing at its Gulshan office in Dhaka.

"I hope the full recovery of exports from the garment sector will be by October this year," he said.

"We are hopeful because majority of the people in the US have already completed the vaccination and the consumers started going to the retail outlets which indicates that the economy is rolling on," he said.

"…and thus the demand for consumer items, especially for garment items, is going up," said Hassan.

European retailers and brands have started reopening stores while consumers are spending more, for which demand for Bangladeshi garment items has also been growing.

Moreover, work orders are being shifted to Bangladesh from other countries like China, thanks to competitive prices and the Covid-19 setbacks.

Currently, the US is the single largest destination for Bangladesh's garment export, with nearly $6.5 billion worth of garment items being shipped in a year.

Of all that is exported to the US, 90 per cent is garment items.

In case of the European Union, Bangladesh exports more than $21 billion worth of garment items in a year, which amounts to 63 per cent of the country's apparel shipments in a year.

Hassan also urged the government to consider garment workers as frontline workers like doctors as they have continued working to keep the wheels of the industries running even when the pandemic was at its most severe stage.

So garment workers need to be vaccinated on a priority basis on the availability of the jabs in the country, Hassan told the journalists.

So far, no worker has succumbed to the virus although some had been infected.

However, Hassan could not state the exact number of workers in the garment sector who had been infected over the last one and a half years.

He also demanded a 10 per cent incentive on export receipts from garment items made from manmade fibres, reasoning that the country was lagging behind in trade of garments made from this specialised fabric.

Demand for garment items produced from manmade fibres is very high compared to that out of cotton fibres.

Some 80 per cent of garments sold in international markets are made from manmade fibres like polyester, polymer and staples.

However, 80 per cent of Bangladesh's total garment export is made from cotton fibres.

This is one of the major reasons for lower prices being garnered from international retailers and brands.

A global slump in demand for garments has also been affecting the price level over the last couple of years, especially since the rise of the pandemic, Hassan said.