Refayet Ullah Mirdha
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.
Courtesy of The Daily Star
