Bangladesh textile garments industry has been suffering a lot during this pandemic situation. It has largely affected order decrease due to COVID-19 outbreak. Last year the industry survived with some good initiatives and government support. As the country is largely affected by the second wave of COVID now it’s really a very hard time for this industry. Recently the BGMEA election has been completed and a new BGMEA committee with the leadership of Mr. Faruque Hassan has taken charge for 2021-2023.
Textile Focus has been talking with BGMEA members’ company Urmi Group regarding the expectation from the new board.
Faiaz Rahman,Director, Urmi Group
I believe my first-time expectation is already in our president’s priority list. As a MMF textile and RMG exporter for the past 13 years, we have been facing immense challenges meeting customer prices. We source both synthetic fabric and yarn from China and the prices doesn’t make sense. As we dug in deeper, we realized that China gets an export incentive on MMF products. I would expect the current board to advocate similar policy support for us as well.
Secondly, I would expect the board to work on skill development of technical and management staff. We can see that most of the sizable companies in the industry are heavily dependent on expat expertise. Clearly the owners don’t feel confident enough to leave the operations in the hands of our local experts. Repatriation of expats Income is a significant percentage of our total export which is hardly surfaced as a loss for the country. We do have multiple institutes which provides technical education but still there is a long way to go.
Complimenting the previous, my third expectation would be to focus on image building locally to attract talents to the industry. The most preferred job for a fresh graduate from a good university is at an MNC ( banking/ commodities/etc). This can be addressed by communicating the positive changes that has taken place in the industry over the past 10 years. RMG and textile is being operated in a much more professional and corporate structure. I would expect the board take our industries image to a place where the most preferred industry for a fresh grad would be RMG!
