Besides, infrastructure bottle necks and capacity constraints, which are the threat to prosperity, needs to be removed to attract more investment in the industry, the life blood of the country’s economy. The observations came after an intense brainstorming panel discussion at a seminar on “Bastra Shilper Adhunikayan (Modernisation of Apparel Industry)” by ThreadSol, an innovative apparel software solutions provider in partnership with Independent TV, a leading private television channel, at the Radisson Blu Hotel in the city on Tuesday evening. The objective of the seminar is to iron out a solution for making the dream of earning additional US$22 billion from garment exports in next five years into a success. The panel is comprised of different sectors, including high government and non-government officials, banks, RMG industry, think tanks and IT officials. Senior Secretary to the Ministry of Commerce, Haydayetullah Al Mamun, Siddiqur Rahman, president of BGMEA, Nazneen Ahmed, Senior Research Fellow, BIDS, Showkat Aziz Russell, Chairman & Managing Director, Amber Denim and Mansij Ganguli, Co-founder & CEO ThreadSol were the discussants at the seminar. Mohammad Zahid Hossain, special affairs editor of Independent TV, moderated the panel discussion. Speaking on the occasion, the experts said globalisation is widely forcing textile producers to use technology that improves productivity through process improvement, product innovation and new worker skills and helps serve the customer more efficiently. Manasij Ganguli said intelloCut was developed to give manufacturers the edge to reduce their material wastage by using effective concepts of fabric utilisation and streamline cutting room processes while at the same time boosting profits by up to 60%. Investment in equipment and new technology will enable output per worker to increase and raise productivity and profitability, the panelist added that this will ultimately help achieve the goal of earning $50bn in exports within the next five-year. The panelists were also of the view that as the country has already enough manpower resource, technology is the only way to reach the goal by minimising the production cost and maximising the profit. Use of technology in Bangladesh garment industry is at a nascent stage, they pointed out and called for a full-blown intervention of technology down to unit or operator level to increase efficiency from production to distribution level. However, large scale manufacturers in the country are starting to look at global technology for their business. The panel noted that the country’s many RMG factories failed to reap the benefit of advanced technology because of the backdated technology use.
