Technological inefficiency, environmental concern, lack of skilled manpower and weakness of infrastructure are key barriers to the development of the country’s prospective plastic sector, said experts and exporters on Monday. In a seminar on ‘Export-oriented plastic industry of Bangladesh: challenges and opportunities,’ they said that Bangladesh had not yet able to take the advantage of preferential market access in full swing in plastic goods exports because of supply-side constraints and lack of technical know-how.
Bangladesh has huge potential for the growth of export oriented plastic industry but major challenge is to build export competitiveness in the sector, additional research director of Centre for Policy Dialogue Khondakar Golam Moazzem said in the seminar while presenting the keynote paper.
Bangladesh Export Promotion Bureau and the Bangladesh Plastic Manufacturers and Exporters Association jointly organised the seminar to address problems and prospects of the sector.
Moazzem pointed out that the global market for plastic and related products was $590 billion while the market size of apparels and textile was $ 772 billion but the export of plastic products could not reach at expected stage.
Though Bangladesh is the second largest garment exporter country in the world and its value might excide $30 billion in the current financial year, the export earnings from plastic products in July-May period fetched $76.50 million with a 2.14 per cent negative growth.
Suggesting exporters to make the sector compliant, Moazzem said that major global retail chains like Walmart, IKEA and Tesco were interested to import plastic products from Bangladesh if it manufactured in complaint factories.
He recommended relocation of factories from the Dhaka and urged the government to provide funds needed for the establishment of a plastic industrial zone.
Moazzem emphasised on proper manifestation of the plastic export in the national data as data only provided information of direct export and ignored indirect (deemed) export.
Deemed export to be reported separately in order to understand the extent of exact amount of export as indirect export is accounted for more than 75 per cent of total plastic export, he said.
BPMEA president Jasim Uddin also urged the government to take measures for establishing an industrial park for the sector.
According to the BPMEA, there are 5,000 plastic factories in the country with an employment of 12 lakh people.
Among the factories, 65per cent are located in Dhaka especially in the Old Town, 20per cent in Chittagong, 10 per cent in Narayanganj and the rest 5 per cent in other parts of the country.
‘We will have to increase export items to maintain the export growth, as the country’s export items are very few,’ said EPB vice-chairman Shubhashish Bose.
He also emphasised on introducing courses in the private and public universities namely polymer technology to create skilled manpower for the plastic sector.
Shubhashish said despite global recession, Bangladesh economy remained stable as the country exported basic products.
He also said Bangladesh would see more foreign direct investment in the plastic sector as the production cost of China and Thailand had increased and they were interested to relocate their production in Bangladesh.
-With New Age input
