It is very encouraging to see that Bangladesh has regained its position as the second largest apparel exporter by earning $1.94 billion more than Vietnam in the first seven months of this calendar year, exporting apparel products worth $18.80bn during the period.
This is even more impressive because Bangladesh’s economy has continued to be hit by the Covid-19 pandemic, and credit must be given to everyone involved in the country’s RMG industry, especially the hard-working labour force who continue to be the principal reason for RMG’s sustained progress in earnings despite the many setbacks.
However, while this achievement is reason for celebration, there is much to be done with regard to Bangladesh’s business climate and export basket. Despite efforts, we continue to languish as far as ease of doing business is concerned, which no doubt hampers our ability to attract more foreign direct investment.
Similarly, while RMG continues to make progress, we as a nation remain overly dependent on this one sector for our export earnings. RMG accounts for 83% of our total export earnings, and as we saw at the beginning of the pandemic, any significant hit to RMG has the entire economy reeling.
Moving forward, while we must build upon the successes of the RMG sector, if we are serious about becoming the nation we aspire to be, creating a more favourable business climate along with diversifying our export basket and building up more export-oriented industries must be top of the mind of our authorities concerned. Only then will Bangladesh fulfill its full potential.
