Bangladesh’s readymade garment exports displayed the poorest performance in six years with 4.1% rise in the just-concluded fiscal year while the country’s overall export growth also slumped to 13-year low.The RMG sector earned $25.49bn in the just-concluded fiscal year compared to $24.49bn in the previous year.However, the country’s largest export industry fell 5.20% short of export target which was set at $26.89bn, said Export Promotion Bureau (EPB) data released yesterday.The knitwear export totalled $12.43bn, up by 3.13% from the previous fiscal’s $12.05bn.The woven products earned $13.06bn with 5% growth over the previous year’s $12.44bn.“We set a target of around $27bn, but political unrest failed us to reach it. If the situation was peaceful, the earnings would stand at $28bn,” said BGMEA vice president Shahidullah Azim.He said relocation of factories as part of safety initiatives had also cast a negative impact on the export growth.He sought low-cost fund from the government and buyers to relocate factories and implement the corrective action plans.Exporters Association of Bangladesh (EAB) President Abdus Salam Murshedy also believed the long-lasting political turmoil, industrial accidents and rise in production cost while ensuring compliance matters were responsible for the slow down.He said the RMG exporters failed to attract buyers due to violent political programmes in the beginning of the second half of the fiscal.But Murshedy hoped the situation could be overcome if the budget was implemented and business people were provided with gas and electricity connections to establish new factories.Khondaker Golam Moazzem, additional research director of the Centre for Policy Dialogue, said political unrest, fluctuation of demand for clothing products in export destinations due to economic slowdown and devaluation of euro against dollar acted as catalyst for the slow down in the RMG sector.On the other hand, the buyers might have placed less orders to Bangladesh due to lack of sufficient progress in compliance issues, and also due to political unrest, said Moazzem.He urged the sector people to increase productivity to deal with the production cost and to remain competitive in the global market.If the situation continued further, it would be very tough to reach the export target of $50bn by 2021, Moazzem said urging all stakeholders to be strategic to ensure better compliance and send a good message to the global buyers to overcome the situation.Bangladesh earned $31.19bn in the FY2014-15, which is 3.35% higher compared to $30.18bn in FY2013-14.Bangladesh set an export target of $33.2bn for the last fiscal year, but it failed to reach the target by around 6.03%. It earned $31.19bn.Leather product exports posted 3.78% rise with $249m earning, while the leather footwear earning rose by 27.81% to $483.81m and other footwear earned $189.46m posting a 10.43% growth in the fiscal year.Home textile earned $804m with a 1.49% growth.Pharmaceutical and ships, boats and floating structure which can be the emerging export earners posted 4.91% and 3518% growth to $72.64 and $15.92 respectively.Among the major sectors, frozen foods witnessed 11% fall due to economic crises in eurozone and trouble in Russian markets.Shrimps, the lifeline of the sector also marked a 7.35% decline. Agriculture products seen 4% slump followed by leather by 21.36%, raw jute 11.73% and specialized textile 1.63%.
