Garment manufacturing productivity competes with developing nations

09 Aug '10

2 min read

As per industry experts, changes made in labour productivity in the apparel industry is helping Cambodia compete with other developing nations.

According to a senior researcher from the Economic Institute of Cambodia, Neou Seiha, the country's productivity is definitely improving as compared to other nations. Hence, Cambodia is receiving more competitive offers, even though the cost of labour is slightly higher than the rest.

More so, as per Seiha, Bangladesh has not triumphed in improving their productivity as much as Cambodia, which is why the change in market choice.

The world economic meltdown, had adversely affected the Cambodian apparel sector. During this time, demand had declined, but revival was faster as against other nations, for instance, Bangladesh, which is undergoing a slow-paced recovery from the meltdown.

A part of this quick recovery was attributed by Seiha to the small size of Cambodia. He said that, Cambodia consisted of just a few over 300 factories, as compared to Bangladesh's over 4000 garment manufacturing units.

Seiha and other industry experts are confident that, Cambodia will return to the same level of apparel exports it had been recording since a few years.

Between 2008 and 2009, Cambodia's apparel exports fell by 16 percent year-on-year, but increased to more than 10 percent to $1.33 billion during the first half of 2010, from $1.21 billion in 2009, as per figures revealed by the Ministry of Commerce.

Fibre2Fashion News Desk - India

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