Global retailer H&M is going to pursue an aggressive approach to buy more readymade garments from Bangladesh.
“We have aggressive growth plan [for Bangladesh],” H&M Senior Executive Johan Stellansson told a workshop on multi-stakeholder engagement on water resources management in Bangladesh at a city hotel yesterday.
If Bangladesh wants to export $50 billion worth of readymade garment products by 2021, it needs aggressive implementation plan, he said. Private sector operators like H&M will play a facilitating role in this regard.
Later, Worldwide Fund for Nature official Laila Petrie made a presentation on behalf of H&M.
She said the Water Act 2013 is a strong policy but it did not cover water pollution and drinking water provisions sufficiently.
She said interaction among institutions is one of the biggest challenges for implementing good water governance, and there is significant opportunity for improvement.
The penalties for non-compliance of the act are very low and there is significant potential in the delegation of monitoring powers to local public representatives to improve implementation.
Senior IFC official Bastiaan Mohrmann said people, economic growth and ecosystem are the main focus in Bangladesh.
He said he first came to Bangladesh in 1982 to work in a project and that time the main problem was too much water.
But now, it is occasionally heard that there is too much water and that is a big difference, he said.