Refayet Ullah Mirdha

Many multinational clothing brands, which source billions of dollars of garment items from Bangladesh, have recently expressed their willingness to open their outlets in the country with a burgeoning economy.

The Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh, the platform of more than 190 mostly Europe-based retailers formed after the Rana Plaza building collapse, is finally leaving the country this May.

Bangladesh’s apparel shipments to the US, its main export destination, edged up in the first 11 months of 2019 -- a heartening development given the inclement condition on the export front.

The Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA) yesterday cut the right of 84 garment factories to duty-free import of fabrics due to poor compliance and safety standards.

Export earnings fell 5.84 percent year-on-year to $19.3 billion in the first six months of the fiscal year mainly because of lower shipment of apparel items.

Debonair Group is set to establish a recycling facility to turn discarded plastic into yarn and fibres for manufacturing jackets, paddings and quilts, keeping in tune with rising global demand for manmade fibres and growing environmental awareness.

A tale of two halves sums up best how the garment sector, Bangladesh’s main export earner, fared in 2019.

Bangladesh is lagging behind its global peers due to lack of investment and adequate government support to set up mills to produce manmade fibres (MMFs), which are gaining popularity worldwide as biodegradable raw material for apparel manufacturing.

The garment sector is facing a double whammy as more and more factories are closing at a time when apparel shipments are falling.

Bangladesh needs to look beyond traditional regional trading blocs in order to widen business opportunities and avoid squeezing of preferential trade benefit once the country becomes a developing nation, the country’s top business leader said.

Bangladesh’s exports will grow 7.3 percent next year, down 1.8 percentage points from that in 2019, as the ongoing global trade tension continues to hurt business in Asia and the Pacific, a new United Nations report said.

More application-based startups can be a game changer for creating jobs for the unemployed and educated youth in Bangladesh, according to a top official of the United Nations.

The prices of Bangladeshi made apparel items continued to fall since the Rana Plaza building collapse in April 2013 although the prices of cotton, the main raw material for fabrics, increased during the time to some extent.

Exports declined in the month of November mainly because of poor performance of apparel shipment, in an ominous sign that can thwart Bangladesh’s target to earn $45.50 billion from merchandise shipment in the current fiscal year.

International Classic Composite Ltd (ICCL) has been facing troubles to invest Tk 250 crore, as the Dhaka’s development authority is not allowing the Bangladesh-Netherlands joint venture knitwear company to use its own land for factory expansion.

Last month, Monir Hossain, a garment factory owner, missed a deadline for exporting T-shirts to his UK buyer through the seaways.

Sanofi’s top management has agreed to pay service benefits to employees in the form of gratuity and provident fund before selling off its shares in Bangladesh, said some employees.

A German garment buyer stayed at the Narayanganj club over the last two days for visits to MB Knit Fashion Ltd.

Thanks to steady economic development and higher incomes of people, Bangladesh has turned into a lucrative market for multinational retail companies, said Rajeev Gopalakrishnan, president of the Asia-Pacific region of Bata.

Swedish retail giant H&M is the largest apparel buyer in Bangladesh. Every year, it buys more than $3 billion worth of garment items from the country. Recently, the company appointed a Bangladesh-born country manager for the first time. Last week Refayet Ullah Mirdha, a senior reporter of The Daily Star, sat with Ziaur Rahman, head of H&M for Bangladesh, Pakistan and Ethiopia, for an interview. Here are the excerpts: