The ready-made garment sector accounts for a large portion of the country’s total export earnings.
In the last fiscal year, the sector’s contribution to exports stood at 81.49 percent. The United States is the major destination for ready-made garment exports.
According to data from the Export Promotion Bureau (EPB) and the National Board of Revenue (NBR), ready-made garments account for 87 percent of total exports to the United States in monetary terms.
Apart from this, another destination for ready-made garments is the European Union market.
These data make two things clear. First, ready-made garments have a single dominant position in the country’s export trade.
This means that exports have become overly dependent on a single product and destination. Secondly, it has not been possible to diversify export products or destinations.
Although various policies and programmes have been taken in the last 25 years to diversify exports, none of these initiatives have yielded the desired results.
On the contrary, the contribution of jute, leather, frozen food, agricultural products, and engineering products to exports is gradually decreasing.
It is becoming a cause of geopolitical pressure, which has already been observed in the tariff negotiations with the United States.
One of the main sources of foreign exchange earnings is exports.
If Bangladesh graduates from a least developed country to a developing country (LDC), it will be able to compete openly in the international market. At this time, existing trade benefits, such as duty exemptions, will be withdrawn. This will have an impact on exports.
Once jute and jute products were Bangladesh’s top exports. 97 percent of export earnings came from the jute sector. For this reason, jute was also called the ‘golden fiber’.
However, over time, the ready-made garment sector has taken over the place of jute. Although the export of ready-made garments began in the 1970s, the sector has developed in the following decades.
The sad thing is that despite being an agriculturally dominant country, agricultural products have not yet occupied a significant position in exports.
The percentage of this sector’s total exports in the latest fiscal year is 2.09 percent. The export sector must be freed from over-reliance on such a handful of products and destinations.
We fear that over-reliance on a single sector and country for exports could put the country’s economy at risk.
The export sector could face a major setback at any time. In such a context, the government should focus on diversifying its export products. At the same time, new export markets must be found out.
