Bangladesh needs to ensure its political stability for creating a congenial atmosphere to rebuild the global buyers’ confidence for the sake of maintaining a sustainable export growth trend in the coming days, Abdus Salam Murshedy, veteran footballer turn businessmen and also the president of Bangladesh Exporters Association (EAB) told the Dhaka Tribune in an exclusive interview.
How can Bangladesh rebuild buyers’ confidence?
Well, globally reputed brands have chosen Bangladesh as a destination for RMG outsourcing since long. In fact, buyers started to raise questions in recent times just after Rana Plaza collapse, which had claimed over 1100 lives.
Following several others factory disasters, the buyers finally expressed their grave concern over the working conditions and fire safety issues.
Apart from that, the recent ongoing political unrests have further deepen the existing crisis as the whole supply chain has been disrupted in the wake of frequent calls for blockades and hartals. As a result, the global buyers have also been confused and worried about the shipment of their products as per schedule.
Under such a circumstance, I think Bangladesh needs to ensure political stability at least for one year, so we can rebuild confidence global buyers’ for continuing sustainable export growth trend.
What are the major challenges before Bangladesh to maintain export growth?
For maintaining export growth and also for reaching a sustainable level, manufacturers have to enhance production capacity through their production engineering. If we do not start our production engineering right now, we won’t be able to increase our production level as per the growing demand.
The government should provide utility support including new gas and electricity connection outside Dhaka city for opening new factories to generate new production. As a good number of RMG factories will have to be relocated outside the capital after the inspection by Accord and Alliance and to continue the production of those factories, the newly set up factories need gas and electricity connection on priority basis. If the government fails to provide utility services to those relocated factories, a huge number of RMG workers would be unemployed as a consequence.
What should we do to explore new markets?
If we want to explore new markets, we need cooperation from the government. It would be really difficult for us to explore our new venues if there have been no foreign mission in the desired countries.
It is important to set up more Bangladeshi missions or even consulates with the trained and knowledgeable persons on Bangladeshi export products, so they can display our products in different exhibitions to attract the buyers in the non-traditional markets. The government should also increase cash incentive to 5% from the existing 2% and to continue it for more years to boost the exporters to explore more new markets.
What would you suggest to the government and the opposition political parties for ensuring smooth transportation to meet the lead time?
First of all, harsh political programmes such as hartals and blockades should be stopped. If political violence cannot be avoided, the whole economy especially the export sector will face the dire consequences.
During hartal and blockades programmes, the country’s business came to a complete halt as transportation system collapsed, suspending import-export supply chain. In recent times, we have seen that RMG laden vehicles were burnt.
Will Pangao Sea Port bring any benefit to exporters?
Off course, we will be benefitted from this port. But it is important to ensure effective use of the port. It needs to be time-bound and cost-effective; otherwise people would not show interest to use the port.
Does devaluation of Indian Rupee cast any impact on Bangladesh exports?
Country’s export sector, especially RMG, jute and ceramic sector will be affected by the devaluation of Indian rupee against US dollar, as prices of Bangladesh and India already came to the same level, even to some extent below.
In order to avert negative impact of the devaluation of rupees, we have already demanded special dollar rates for the exporters on behalf of the RMG sector. On the other hand, India is going to get the GSP facilities, which would be a big blow for us.
What Bangladesh should introduce to ship products quickly?
Being a developing industrial country, there is no alternative to the deep sea port to cope with our tougher competitors as shipment of products has become a major concern for us.
We are to ship our products via another deep sea port, which takes 15 to 20 days in a shipment period. Against such backdrop, Mongla Sea Port can be converted into deep sea port to meet the real time shipment deadline set by our clients.
What is the prospect of the apparel industry in the year 2014?
The New Year 2014 would be a challenging transitional period for the garment sector as we have to go through scanning by the International Labour Organisation (ILO), Accord and Alliance to ensure fire and building safety in the work place.
Though it might be a very tough time for us to face the challenges ahead, we do hope to get this sector a compliant one in 2014.