Bangladesh’s exports of readymade garment products to the US market maintained a steady growth in recent months as the US economy is recovering from a recent slowdown and the buyers are regaining confidence in the Bangladeshi products with the improvement of compliance situation, exporters said. The RMG export earnings from the US market in the first seven months of this year grew by 8.51 per cent to $1.19 billion compared with that of $2.94 billion in the same period of last year, according to the data released by the Office of Textiles and Apparels under the US commerce department. Exporters said Bangladesh had overcome the negative impact of Tazreen Fashions fire incident and Rana Plaza building collapse and the exporters achieved the confidence of the American buyers. ‘Amid the negative growth in the eurozone and slow growth in non-traditional markets the steady growth in the US market will encourage our entrepreneurs,’ Abdus Salam Murshedy, president of the Exporters Association of Bangladesh, told New Age on Saturday. After the two major disasters in the Bangladesh garment sector, two platforms of North American and European retailers started work to improve working condition and factory standard in the country’s RMG factories and now the retailers are convinced that the RMG sector in Bangladesh has improved a lot, he said. ‘Though we have registered an encouraging growth in the US market, Bangladesh still remains behind the rates of growth achieved by Vietnam, India and Sri Lanka,’ Murshedy said. Apparel export earnings of Vietnam from US in the January-July period grew by 14.94 per cent to $5.94 billion from $5.17 billion in the same period of the year 2014, according to the data. India’s apparel exports to the US market in the first seven months of this year increased by 9.63 per cent to $2.33 billion from $2.13 billion in the same period of last year. RMG exports from Sri Lanka to the US market in the January-July of 2015 increased by 16.10 per cent to $1.17 billion from $1.01 billion in the same period of 2014. Apparel exports earnings of China from the US market in the first seven months of this year grew by 2.34 per cent to $15.95 billion from $15.59 billion in the same period of last year, the data showed. Murshedy, also a former president of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association, hoped that the export to the US market would increase more in future after certification by Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety, the retailers’ platform that is engaged in the sector with the aim of making the factories safer. He said that the key challenge for the RMG sector in Bangladesh was losing competitive edge as competitor countries were devaluing their currencies and adjusting fuel prices considering the international market but the Bangladeshi currency was being appreciated and the power price was being hiked.
