Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA) President Faruque Hassan urged the brands, retailers and representatives of buyers to kindly consider a rational price upcharge in current price negotiations for the orders to be produced from December 1 onwards.
Faruque made the call in a letter considering the standard and cost of living of the workers and the inflation.
He said regardless of Bangladesh’s position and stake in the global apparel value chain—as manufacturers or buyers-- all are passing through a tough time.
“The unprecedented inflation, leading to contractionary policies by central banks in all developed countries, is affecting disposable income, spending and demand for products. While managing supply chain has become difficult at retail end, we, the manufacturers are in a complete ‘nightmare situation’ to manage our capacities, supply chain, planning and forecasting,” he said.
While mentioning that the local exporters have been quite successfully able to retain growth momentum in export so far he also mentioned the zero tolerance and committed efforts and investments made by the industry to remediate and ensure complete safety at workplace.
“This makes us unique as a nation and we want to continue this journey with you. We’re working continuously to improvise ourselves. We’re making all the efforts to make business easier and efficient. Some of our steps in recent past have already brought results, especially with regard to importation of textile from India through multiple land ports, relaxation of rules regarding partial shipment while importing textile from India,” he added.
The BGMEA president said the direct cargo train between India and Bangladesh and improved warehousing capacity in land custom ports has opened a gateway for improved trade logistics.
Government also waived the rule of mandatory fumigation for importing cotton from USA. At the same time, the rule regarding import of raw materials on FOC basis is relaxed from four months to six months, he continued.
Faruque Hassan said that Bangladesh now has 202 LEED certified RMG factories of which, 73 are platinum.
“We’re working with a clear sustainability vision to significantly decarbonise our industry and adopt circularity by 2030, which aligns with your priorities and complements your values as well,” he added.
Mentioning that they are trying to make BGMEA as a futuristic organisation, Faruque said they have established a Future Center at BGMEA which covers a Center for Innovation, Center for Efficiency and Center for OSH to foster innovation in every segment of the trade, the Textile Technology Business Center (TTBC), which is an offspring of the Partnership for Cleaner Textile (PaCT) project, a Responsible Business Hub (RBH) in BGMEA to strengthen the capacities of our manufacturers to adapt and comply with the globally emerging due diligence, and a Circular Fashion Unit to deal with the circular economy initiatives.
Since inflation and production cost hike including gas, electricity, fuel, transport and other costs, is squeezing the breathing space, he said in fact the workers, who are the lifeline of this industry, is suffering the most from the inflation.
