An RMG roundtable organised by the Dhaka Tribune, and attended by the commerce minister, industry owners, buyers, and the ILO, has highlighted the need for the government to be more far-sighted in developing the country’s infrastructure.
Overcoming the challenges faced by RMG is vital to sustaining the future growth of our economy.
While some obstacles, such as US tariffs, are specific to the sector, the challenges it faces in improving productivity and working conditions are of relevance to all major businesses.
These include lack of reliable power and bureaucratic hurdles hindering the development of new factories. There is also a chronic lack of investment by the industry itself in developing the skills base of its workforce, which makes it difficult to fill mid and higher management posts, despite the large number of business graduates produced by our universities.
Poor infrastructure was identified as the major bottleneck to growing exports. In a country of our size, it should not take a whole day to transport goods from Gazipur to the Chittagong port. Improving transport across the country could reduce delays through faster speeds and by allowing more new factories to be built in closer locations. This needs to be matched by increasing container capacity by building a new deep sea port.
If Bangladesh is to sustainably grow the industry to meet the target of $50bn exports by 2021, then the work being done by stakeholders to improve safety and working conditions needs to be matched by increasing national investment in infrastructure.
