Nearly sixty thousands looms were shut down in last two years in the country and oven dyeing mills cut their processing capacity to 40 per cent due mainly to unbridled trading of foreign dress items in the country, said Bangladesh Textile Mills Association president Mohammad Ali Khokan.The BTMA president made the statement while addressing a press conference at the trade body’s office in the capital, Dhaka, on Monday.The trade body arranged the briefing to announce a four-day international textile and garment machinery exhibition which will begin at the Bangabandhu International Conference Centre in Dhaka tomorrow.Mohammad Ali said the local textile market was deteriorating day after day due to misuse of bond benefits for textile materials including foreign yarn, fabrics, salower and kamiz.The clothing materials are brought to the country illegally and traded freely in the local market, which is one of the reasons for bad shape of the local market.He also highlighted gas and electricity crisis as a prime barrier to investment in the textile sector.Mohammad Ali said, ‘The government imports liquefied natural gas to solve gas and electricity crisis, but it should be assured that the prices will remain at bearable level, otherwise LNG import will not bring any positive result for the sector.’He also urged the government to allocate at least 25 economic zones to the primary textile sector.The exhibition which will remain open for all from 12:00pm to 8:00pm is jointly organised by BTMA and Yorkers Trade and Marketing Service Company Limited to introduce local entrepreneurs with innovative machinery and transformation of technologies.It is the 16th version of textile and garment industry machinery exhibition in Bangladesh.Planning minister MA Mannan is expected to inaugurate the four-day event.‘We want to introduce our entrepreneurs with the latest technology in textile and garment machinery through this exposition,’ the BTMA president said.Some 1,200 machinery manufacturing organisations from 37 countries are participating in the exhibition.The countries include Australia, Austria, Belgium, China, Czech Republic, Brazil, Croatia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Netherlands, Pakistan, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, the UK, the UAE and the USA.Mohammad Ali said that the spot sales of machinery were $280 million in last year and they were expecting more spot orders this year.Bangladesh, being the second largest exporter of the readymade garments in the world, earned $30.61 billion from export of textiles in the 2017-18 financial year, which is 83.47 per cent of the country’s total export income.
