As Bangladesh's export trade is heavily dependent on apparel contributing the lion's share of the country's export earnings, Commerce Adviser Sk. Bashir Uddin has strongly affirmed the government’s stance regarding the diversification of exportable items other than RMG.
The commerce adviser came up with such a stance while giving an interview to the national news agency BSS at his office at Bangladesh Secretariat.
Asked about the export earnings and move towards diversification of exportable items other than RMG, he said that the country has bright prospects in leather, fish, shrimp, jute, and jute goods other than RMG, but their export growth did not turn negative all on a sudden.
It happened through a process mostly due to the results of the unruly acts by the previous AL regime while the interim government has been trying to address the matters, he said, adding, “Thanks to Almighty Allah that we’ve attained export growth, but it is vulnerable for us that we’re still dependent heavily on a single product which is RMG,”
For Bangladesh, export concentration has emerged as a major and long-standing challenge. Before the 1980s, a few primary products dominated Bangladesh's exports.
The growth of the RMG industry resulted in a short-lived phase of diversification in the late 1980s, during that time garments and non-garment exports held nearly equal shares.
However, while non-RMG exports grew at a compound annual rate of 7.6 percent, from $1 billion in the early 1990s to just over $8 billion by 2023, garment exports surged from $1 billion to $47 billion in the same period, with an annual growth rate of 14.6 percent.
Bangladesh's heavy reliance on a single export product makes its export basket one of the least diversified globally.
The commerce adviser said that the Jute Diversification Promotion Center (JDPC) has unveiled some 284 diversified products from jute, but it is a ‘fallacy’ since these 284 products all together could not fetch even Taka 284 crore or one-fourth of the export earnings although such things had long been happening.
“We all together had fallen into an unruly environment for which a one-sided imposed growth was attained during that regime (AL). What was actually attained is really a matter to be considered seriously,” he noted.
Bashir said that the Ministry of Commerce is also taking some epoch-making initiatives in potential sectors like leather and leather goods in consultation with the industries ministry regarding the issues on CETP at Savar Tannery Estate.
Hopefully, the problems should be resolved by the end of this year if everything goes accordingly, he added.
Source: BSS
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