The New Nation - Internet Edition

Staff Reporter

BGMEA president Anwarul Alam Chowdhury Parvez yesterday attributed a good rising trend in readymade garment export but found it difficult to run factories due to high production costs and manpower shortages.

"Price hike of fuel oil has increased production and transportation costs significantly. Besides, our factories are facing labour shortages by 25 to 30 per cent that makes the business awful," Parvez told The New Nation yesterday.

"Price of RMG product in the global market is at decreasing trend. Besides, export volume is not increasing steadily. But cost of production is rising continuously. Some of the factories are about to collapse," he added. The recession in the US has lowered our RMG export by 35 percent in recent months. But they are importing textiles from Bangladesh due to low price.

"If the cost of production continues to rise we will not be able to compete with the rivals. We will lose the market," he said.

The BGMEA recently said that price hike of fuel oil would increase production cost of readymade garment by 15 per cent.

It said the readymade garment sector would have to pay additional Tk 600 crore annually due to the oil price hike.

Up to May this year the RMG sector attained 15.85 per cent growth, with 10.68 per cent in woven and 21.17 per cent in knitwear sectors. The total RMG export till May this year stands at US$9557.66 million against last year's US$8249.83 million in same period.