Face2Face extends its warm welcome, Mr Islam. As you have taken charge as BGMEA President recently, we extend best compliments, and request your words on the significance that the RMG sector enjoys in the country’s economy.
Thanks for your compliments. Yes, the readymade garment industry acts as the backbone of Bangladesh economy. The industry contributes more than 10% to GDP, employs 3.6 million people directly, 80% of them are women, accounts for 77% of country’s export earning, i.e. USD14.86 billion worth of garment exports in 2010, around 20 million people are directly and indirectly depending on this RMG sector for their immediate livelihoods, rapid industrial growth and increase in employment through exports, economy moving out from Aid to Trade, the industry has created a platform for 2.8 million women to engage in new productive role in the society and empowering them, playing a lead role to alleviate poverty through skills development and employment generation.
So, for such a vital economy driver segment, as a representative body, what activities does BGMEA shoulder in enhancing the sector's performance day by day?
BGMEA works with the vision to develop the RMG industry of Bangladesh and the economy of the country. Having such vision BGMEA chalked out the following missions and its strategic direction is paved accordingly:
Firstly, to protect and promote the interests of the industry; thus ensuring a sustained growth in the foreign exchange earnings of the country.
Secondly, BGMEA is committed to ensure all legitimate rights and privileges of the garment workers. The association also strives toward the betterment of the society and environment.
On the trade promotion area we provide policy advocacy and dialogues for smooth functioning of trade and industries, issue Utilization Declaration (UD) and Utilization Permission (UP) as Entrusted by the Government, play a lead role in maintaining harmonious industrial relationship, keep members abreast on contemporary global business trend, organize Bangladesh Apparel & Textile Exposition (BATEXPO) since 1989 and the Chittagong Fabric, Apparel and Textile Exposition (CAFAXPO) since 2003, organize trade missions to explore the new markets and to facilitate trade in existing markets, organize seminars for recommending on key policies, take part in bilateral and multilateral trade negotiations.
On the CSR part, we are also doing a number of activities like monitoring compliance standard in factories, group insurance scheme for the garment workers and staffs has been made mandatory, provide arbitration facilities to the garment workers free of cost, organize worker fairs annually, in 2010 a voice talent hunt program for the garment workers titled “Gorbo” was organized, building Code has been made mandatory for all member units, conduct regular fire drills and fire safety training program in member factories, run skill development programs for the garment industry, have taken particular projects for the rehabilitation of the returned camel Jokies from Dubai and provide job offers to people with disabilities in RMG factories.
We have exclusive activities on workers’ healthcare issues. BGMEA runs 12 healthcare centers at present in Dhaka and Chittagong for the garment workers and their families. These centers provide pre-medical treatment at free of cost, and also provide awareness on HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and other health issues. We are also in process to establish two full-fledged hospitals for the workers, a 100 bedded one in Chittagong and another 150 bedded in Dhaka. The one in Chittagong has already started partial operation with 25 beds and will be ready for full-fledged operation by this year. The hospital in Dhaka is under construction and will be completed by the next year. Besides, we also stand besides the people whenever there is any emergency or natural disaster in the country.
That is really appreciable. <br></br> Mr Islam, from this year start, the European Union’s relaxed rules, which are meant for the Least Developed Countries (LCDs), under Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) in case of textile trade, are also applied. How is this move bidding for RMG sector of your country?
The revised GSP rules of origin adopted by the EU has created a new momentum in our exports to EU, particularly in the area of GSP utilization we have seen remarkable surge. Previously around 40% of our woven exports used to avail GSP benefit, whereas more than 80% of knitwear exports to EU used to get this benefit. Now, all exports are eligible for GSP, as the rule has come down from 2-stage to 1-stage work processing. We believe this will open a new door of opportunity for us to further penetrate our market in the Euro zone. On the other hand it will also create a market for textile and textile articles in Bangladesh for countries like India from where we are already sourcing cotton and textiles.
In that connection, how about recently held trade-talk between India and Bangladesh’s Commerce ministers; what benefits it stores for both nations?
The visit of Honorable Commerce Minister of India has created a new enthusiasm particularly in the business community of Bangladesh. We welcome the announcement of Indian Commerce Minister to enhance the existing Tariff Rate Quota (TRQ) for apparel from 8 million pieces to 10 million pieces, but in contrast to the capacity of our industry this quota is very nominal. However, we have been assured the due consideration of India about withdrawing the 4% special additional duty levied on the exports under TRQ and also to eliminate some apparel items from the India’s sensitive list. The most important of such visit is the remarkable improvement of bilateral relationship between these two neighboring countries.
Well, that was on the rosy side of the picture. Now, discussing on the areas of hurdles; Gas crisis have been great impediment. What say?
Yes, we have some infrastructural bottlenecks. But the encouraging fact is that the present government has taken all-out steps to address these problems, particularly to improve the electricity and gas shortfall. Significant improvement is already visible and we hope over the next year or two, the situation will calm down. However, we have also made specific recommendations from the business side to improve the situation.
In tune to your note on solutions to infrastructural bottlenecks; will Bangladesh adapt itself on the front of E-commerce that is going to be a must tool for trade in apparel retail industry for near future?
Yes, there is no denial to the importance of information technology particularly in the international trade and business. It is next to impossible to stay alive in the business without having proper access to information. The present government of Bangladesh has also a clear agenda which is Digital Bangladesh. We have made significant progress in the area of information technology and its application over the past decade. Around 77% of our population are young and below 40 years of age. Most of them are computer literate. So we see a good prospect in using e-commerce and yield the optimum benefits of it.
Closing the talk here, may I lastly request you to also share about the activities that BGMEA carries to hone its human resource?
In our discussion before I have already mentioned points about welfare and CSR activities that BGMEA does for our workers and the community. Apart from that, BGMEA also runs an extensive program on skill development country-wide. We follow a unique model in skill development: train the poor people living in the distressed areas, utilizing the idle capacity of Government’s technical training institutes and this addresses the skill shortage of the industry. Currently, we are running 10 training centers and will open more. Besides, we run separate training program for the rehabilitation of returned Camel JOKIES.
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DISCLAIMER: All views and opinions expressed in this column are solely of the interviewee, and they do not reflect in any way the opinion of Fibre2Fashion.com.
