The owners of domestic fashion houses and their supplier micro-entrepreneurs are now incurring huge financial losses due to the coronavirus pandemic in the country that has forced the businesses to shut their stores as well as the production for an indefinite period. Fashion house owners said that they had missed the sales on the occasion of Pahela Baishakh (Bangla New Year) that they called the second largest festival in terms of the volume of sales and the largest festival Eid-ul-Fitr would be missed due to the growing cases of novel coronavirus that infected 182 and killed 39 till Monday. Pahela Baishakh is being celebrated today and Eid-ul-Fitr, one of the largest festivals for Muslims, will be celebrated in the second half of May. Shaheen Ahammed, president of the Fashion Entrepreneurs Association of Bangladesh, a platform of 250 domestic fashion entrepreneurs, told New Age on Monday that there were 5000 domestic fashion houses across the country, which had targeted to sell products worth more than Tk 2,000 crore in this Baishakh but missed it due to COVID-19. ‘During Eid-ul-Fitr, the domestic fashion houses usually sell products worth Tk 4,000 crore to Tk 5,000 crore but the sales have also been suspended,’ said Shaheen, also owner of Anjans, a reputed domestic fashion brand. He said that Baishakh products were ready for sales while the manufacturers were busy to make Eid products when the coronavirus crisis began in Bangladesh. Former FEAB president Azharul Hoque Azad said that due to the crisis, 25 lakh people including five lakh who were directly involved with the trade were facing financial crisis. ‘It is a loss of over Tk 6,000 crore,’ Azharul, also the managing director of Sada Kala, said. The business leaders welcomed the prime minister Sheikh Hasina’s declaration of Tk 20,000 crore in subsidy package for the SME sector and said that before starting the banking activities the government should on emergency basis allocate Tk 500 crore for small entrepreneurs to bear maintenance cost including workers’ wages and allowances. Sales at domestic fashion houses fell drastically at the beginning of March, days before the first COVID-19 patient was identified in Bangladesh. Finally the fashion brands decided to shut their outlets across the country on March 24. Mohammad Ashraful Alam, chief operating officer of Aarong, an enterprise of Brac, the largest NGO in the world, said that the sales during Pahela Baishakh and Eid-ul-Fitr contributed 40 per of their annual turnover and they missed the sales this year due to COVID-19. He said that the largest fashion house in the country targeted Tk 125 crore in turnover in this Bangla New Year and had completed collecting all the products before the coronavirus outbreak began in the country. He said that usually this period was considered as the peak season for producers but this year the situation was completely different.
