Garment exporters on Thursday called on the buyers and retailers to come forward to ensure a sustainable readymade garment sector in Bangladesh through increasing prices of products. They also demanded 5 per cent cash incentive for the RMG sector for next three years saying that the industry experiences huge pressure of wage hike, energy price increase, remediation cost and low prices of products. The made the demand at a meeting on sustainability of readymade garment sector in Bangladesh organised by Dhaka Chamber of Commerce and Industry held at the conference room of the chamber in the city. ‘We have a good number of green factories in the country but we are not getting prices of our products,’ said Rubana Huq, president of Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association. She said that the sector is progressing for four decades in the country but still it is yet to gain maturity in terms of price negotiation. ‘Global market passes through a transition period. It is very difficult transformation and it is about price. We are actually sandwiched between buyers and other actors,’ she said. Rubana claimed that incentive to every market really encouraged business. She sought active support from the government and said that RMG sector was yet to be sustainable. Regarding Accord and Alliance, the BGMEA president said that the two platforms helped RMG sector in Bangladesh a lot and now the time has come to go the initiative. Commerce minister Tipu Munshi said that energy prices, cost of port and weakness in infrastructures were cutting competitive edge of RMG sector but it should not be. He agreed that the RMG industry needed some incentives for a certain period in order to support the industry. Tipu Munshi urged for increasing negotiation skill to get the best price from the buyers. Commerce minister informed that FTA with Sri Lanka might be signed by a month. DCCI president Osama Taseer presented a keynote paper at the event. He showed that wage hike, energy cost hike, remediation cost, currency depreciation, international market prices and labour productivity as the challenges for country’s RMG sector. He urged the government for designing a five-year-long energy pricing policy for the RMG industry.
