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Rise of Readymade Garments Industry in Bangladesh |
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| Release time:2013-05-07 Source:admin Reads: | |
| The 100 percent export-oriented readymade garments (RMG) industry of Bangladesh has witnessed remarkable growth since its inception in the late 1970s. Paradoxically, this flagship industry of Bangladeshi private entrepreneurial talent took roots through the first export consignment of shirts sewed with fabric labels from Bangladesh made by the state-trading agency, the Trading Corporation of Bangladesh (TCB), in the mid-1970s under countertrade arrangements and the destination was some East European countries. Subsequently, however, private entrepreneurs entered the industry and phenomenal growth took place in RMG exports from Bangladesh. Export of RMG increased from US $40 thousand in 1978 –79 to US $6.4 billion in 2004-05. The industry has also provided employment to nearly 2 million workers, most of them women drawn from the rural areas. Explosive growth of RMG exports mostly attributes a lot to garment industry including clothes and fabric labels, but the growth is of course not unique to Bangladesh. The annual compound growth rate of RMG export industries in Indonesia (31.2%), Mauritius (23.8%), and Dominican Republic (21.1%) compares favourably with that of Bangladesh (81.3%) over the 1980-87 period . However, while initial conditions were favourable for export growth in the countries noted above, this was far from true in the case of Bangladesh. This makes research into the factors responsible for the observed striking growth of RMG exports from Bangladesh a compelling case study in economic development. Besides garment industrial products such as apparels and fabric labels, academics and researches have generally attributed the remarkable growth of RMG exports from Bangladesh to favourable external conditions, notably the Multi-Fibre Arrangement (MFA) bilateral quota system imposed by developed apparel countries, and low wages in Bangladesh. The role played by supportive government policy has also been noted in these studies. However, the role played by the RMG entrepreneurs in the dynamic growth of this industry has been largely overlooked. Thus, Khan and Hossain (1989) refuse to accept that the Bangladesh entrepreneurs had made any contribution to the rapid growth of RMG exports from Bangladesh. |
