BGMEA seeks 'package', warns of nose-dive

BGMEA seeks 'package', warns of nose-dive
Wed, Feb 18th, 2009 10:14 pm BdST


Dhaka, Feb 18 (bdnews24.com) – Garment manufacturers have sought an 'economic package' from the government, warning that the country's number one export industry could take a nose-dive from the ongoing world recession.

"[Garment] exports have fallen this year compared to last year. We are apprehending negative impacts of the ongoing global economic crisis by April," BGMEA president Anwar-ul-Alam Chowdhury Parvez said Wednesday.

"If the government does not announce an 'economic package', the garment export sector will nose dive," he said at a press conference at BGMEA office in the city.

"Orders have already been cancelled, and many February orders have been shifted to March."

The intensity of the negative impacts will be clear by April, Parvez predicted.

Parvez said ready-made garment exports in January this year was down by 4.98 percent compared to January 2008.

Exports in the first six months of the current fiscal were still worth $6.05 billion, he said.

"But the garment industry will remain at risk over the next one to one and a half years," said Parvez.

Despite president Barack Obama's signing of a $787 billion stimulus plan for the US eceonomy, former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan warned Tuesday the current global recession will "surely be the longest and deepest" since the 1930s".

Parvez, citing the examples of India, Vietnam, Pakistan, China and other of Bangladesh's competitors, said governments were offering packages to sustain industrial growth in the face of the global crisis.

"We've also urged the new government to rpovide an economic package and form a taskforce exclusively for this industry."

He said the government could also offer technical cooperation to the sector, along with assistance in finding ways to increase RMG exports.

If the government provides necessary assistance, RMG exports could top $14 billion this year, he said.

He said under the prevailing economic conditions, the garment industry should be declared a "thrust sector".

Some 28 lakh people are employed directly in the sector, said Parvez , adding that it was possible to employ another 3-4 lakh each year and to export garments worth $25 billion by 2013 with support from the government.

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