The government will hold a meeting with the foreign buyers of Bangladesh readymade garments to restore their confidence that has been dashed due to the prolonged political unrest and two major factory disasters. The garment sector leaders said that commerce minister Tofail Ahmed is likely to sit with the Buyers Forum on February 3 at a hotel in the capital as sector players have recently urged the minister to arrange a meeting with the buyers.
They also requested the minister to urge the buyers to participate in the implementation process of new wage board by increasing prices and to extend support on the compliance issues in the sector.
‘The readymade garment sector in Bangladesh is passing through a tough time at home and abroad due to various reasons and so we requested the government to arrange a meeting with the buyers to restore their confidence,’ Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association vice-president Shahidullah Azim told New Age on Tuesday.
He said that the garment sector in Bangladesh faced a severe image crisis across the world in last one year due to two factory disasters and at the same time the foreign buyers were disappointed due to continuing political unrest surrounding the national elections.
A number of buyers cut and shifted their orders from Bangladesh to other countries in last several months as they lost their confidence in Bangladesh suppliers, he said.
‘Recently, we have requested the commerce minister to arrange a meeting with the buyers to restore their confidence as buyers have already started to shift their orders to other countries,’ Bangladesh Knitwear Manufacturers and Exporters Association vice-president Mohammed Hatem told New Age.
He said that the government would give assurance of a stable situation and full security of investment of the buyers.
‘Though normalcy has started to return across the country after the national polls, the response of the global buyers was not encouraging as they already got a bitter experience,’ Hatem said.
On January 21, at a meeting with commerce minister, BGMEA president Atiqul Islam had expressed his fear that the country’s garment market might be taken away by other countries if the government failed to restore confidence in foreign buyers.
He had warned that if buyers start to move out then it will be very difficult to bring them back.
Earlier on December 12, amid the frequent political turmoil, the government held a meeting with the Buyers Forum to restore their confidence in Bangladesh and stop them from shifting their orders to other countries out of panic over the political instability.
At the meeting, the then labour minister Khandker Mosharraf Hossain proposed to form a steering committee comprising of representatives of buyers,
the government and exporters to address the problems of foreign buyers of readymade apparels, but the committee is yet to be formed.
The recommendations of the meeting including forming steering committee still remained unimplemented, Hatem said.
-With New Age input
