The government is going to formulate ‘Bastro Shilpo Prothistan Ain-2015’ (Textile Industries Establishment Act-2015) aimed at making the Directorate of Textile as an effective ‘sponsoring authority’ for the readymade garment sector. Stakeholders, however, termed some provisions of the proposed act detrimental to the industry. According to the proposed draft of the law, none would establish and run textiles and garments factories without registration under the textile industries establishment act. If anyone violates the law there is a provision for one year imprisonment or Tk 1 lakh penalty in the draft law. After enactment of the law, all the new establishments (textile and garments) would have to take registration under the act and all the existing factories would have to come under the registration of the textile directorate within six months as per the new law, the draft said. According to the draft, any officers designated from the directorate could inspect factories at any time and the factories would be bound to provide documents as per requirements of the directorate. The textile directorate would establish a database of the industries based on the information provided by the factories, the draft said. Earlier, the government took initiative to formulate two separate laws for registration and control of the garments and textile industries and later the government prepared a draft namely ‘Bangladesh Private Textile Industries (Registration and Coordination) Act-2015’. The draft was sent to the stakeholders for their comments in December last year but most of the stakeholders were yet to send their comments to the jute and textile ministry. The name of the act later was changed to ‘Bastro Shilpo Prothistan Ain-2015’ (Textile Industries Establishment Act-2015). Following several reminders, Bangladesh Knitwear Manufacturers and Exports Association sent its comments putting reservations on some issues. The BKMEA expressed its reservation over the registration clause of the draft law and said the clause should be applicable for the new establishments and the license for the existing factories should be renewed based on the previous license of the Board of Investment. The BKMEA demanded scrapping the provision of recommendation to the customs authorities regarding release of imported capital machineries and indemnity bond. The trade body said that it would not be pragmatic to renew the license of factories every three years as the industry is not a trading company. The period for renewal of license for the factories should be 10 years instead of three years, the BKMEA said. The Textile and Jute ministry held several meetings on the draft law and requested stakeholders to send their comments. A ministry official said that lastly on august 17 the ministry gave reminder to stakeholders for submitting comments by September 1. ‘After the deadline, we will hold another meeting with the stakeholders and the draft will be finalized in that meeting,’ he said.
