Reopened factories help exports rise to $3.1b in April
Business Desk :
Bangladesh s export earnings climbed up to $3,134.38 million in April, 502.75% higher than the same month last year.
Export came down to only $520.01 million in April 2020 - the lowest in the history of Bangladesh - due to the general holiday and the closure of factories in Bangladesh amid Covid-19 outbreak.
Export earnings rose last month, thanks to the shipments of garment products. Besides, jute and jute goods, agricultural products, leather and leather goods, engineering goods, frozen and live fish and the pharmaceutical sector also experienced a good growth on the tenth month of the current fiscal year.
Red-hot US recovery boosts RMG hope
Bangladeshi suppliers receiving higher queries from American buyers
The strong performance of the US economy fuelled by the Biden administration s relief cheques to the people and the ongoing rapid vaccination holds promises for the recovery of Bangladesh s garment shipment to its single largest export destination.
US economic growth accelerated in the first quarter as the government gave money to mostly lower-income households, fueling consumer spending and setting the course for what is expected to be the strongest performance this year in nearly four decades.
GDP increased at a 6.4 per cent annualised rate in the January to March quarter, the biggest first-quarter expansion since 1984. That followed a 4.3 per cent growth rate in the fourth quarter, according to Reuters.
Exports fetch $3.13b in April
Receipts up six times year-on-year as shipment fell
to historic low last year
In April last year, earnings from the garment sector, which contributes 84 per cent to national export in a year, were only 0.37 billion because of lockdown and shutdown of factories. Star/file
Earnings from merchandise exports surged as much as six times year-on-year to $3.13 billion in April thanks to a rebound in apparel shipment buoyed by the reopening of the economies in the US and Europe.
Export receipts rose abnormally in April compared to the level in the same month last year, when overseas sales stood at a meagre $0.52 billion, the lowest in the history of Bangladesh, as a strict lockdown and the closure of factories in Bangladesh due to Covid-19 battered the economy.
Mainstreaming human rights in business to protect workers’ rights
A study led by the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) revealed that more than 3,50,000 workers in the RMG sector have lost their jobs during Covid-19 pandemic while most of the workers have been laid off without proper compensation. A staggering official record is of 56372 workers being laid off. The report also finds that the high rate of retrenchment was occurred in small factories amounting to over 10% of total work force.
According to Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA), at least 70,000 workers have been terminated in garment factories since April 2020. As per Bangladesh Garment and Industrial Workers Federation, 150,000 workers have already lost their jobs and termination occurs every day. The Penn State Center for Global Workers Rights has found that more than a million Bangladeshi apparel workers got laid off while 72.4% of them were sent home without pay.
POLICY FORUM
30 April 2021
Its government might think the worst of the pandemic’s impact has passed, but Bangladesh’s ready-made garment industry needs continued support before it can achieve a new normal, Shahidur Rahman writes.
It’s been a year since the COVID-19 shattered Bangladesh’s export-oriented ready-made garment (RMG) industry, which employs around four million people and operates 4,500 factories.
When the pandemic hit, buyers began cancelling orders at a huge scale, and since then, the garment industry has been struggling to recover from COVID-19 related challenges.
According to the government figures, export earnings in April 2020 from the RMG industry crashed to $370 million, compared to $2.53 billion in the same month the previous year.