Textile production

Bangladesh garment manufacturers said Sunday they have targetted Japan as their next big market to offset a drop in orders from the United States and Europe caused by the global financial crisis.

?Bangladesh plans to raise the value of its textile exports to Japan to $1 billion over the next two years, a senior business leader said on Thursday.

“Now we are fully prepared to attract more and more buyers from Japan which will help to grow our market many folds day by day,” said Mohammad Fazlul Hoque, president of Bangladesh Knitwear Manufacturer and Exporter Association (BKMEA).

“A massive black cloud has gathered over our heads,” said Fazlul Hoque, president of Bangladesh Knitwear Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BKMEA).

?”Orders in September have fallen by 10 percent, and the indications are there that the industry will experience a sharp decline like the one we experienced immediately after 9/11 in 2001,” he said.

Bangladesh exports only $50 million worth of ready-made garments to Japan which annually consumes $23 billion worth of ready-made garments, mostly importing from China, Fazlul said.

“Recently we, along with other textile entrepreneurs, visited Japan and did several interactions with most of the leading textile importers who committed to increase trade volume with us,” Fazlul told reporters.

He said that BKMEA would organize a 3-day international exhibition from Monday to present the products to the potential importers and about 150 buyers across the world will participate.

Most of the leading textile importers from Japan and also buyers from the United States, China, India, Hong Kong, South Africa, Australia, Italy, Netherlands, Russia, Belgium will participate in this showcase, he said.

“Japan is the world’s fourth largest garment importer. Yet last year we exported 6.4 million dollars’ worth of apparel there, against Japan’s total import of around 9.3 billion dollars,” he said.

“We have to enter the Japanese market at any cost to survive the coming storm. We have identified that in four out of ten top Japanese apparel items, we have huge price advantages,” he added.

The group, whose members generate nearly 55 percent of the country’s entire clothing exports, has invited ten top Japanese buyers this year to inspect Bangladeshi factories.

Readymade garments, which account for 80 percent of total exports, earned more than $11 billion in the last fiscal year.

Bangladesh has set 13 percent higher export target of $17.6 billion for the current fiscal year to end June 2010.

Bangladesh’s overall exports grew 10.3 percent to $15.56 billion in the 2008/09 fiscal year, down 4.76 percent from the previous year and the lowest growth in six years, following the global slowdown.

Earnings from knit textiles from July to June of the previous fiscal year (2008/09) rose 16.2 percent to $6.4 billion while exports of woven garments rose 14.5 percent to $5.9 billion in the same year.

The garment trade is the backbone of Bangladesh’s manufacturing industry, accounting for 80 percent of total exports and 40 percent of industrial jobs.

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Border line confliction

The potential for conflict between Bangladesh and Burma appears to have gotten more serious after Bangladesh said it is responding to threats from its eastern neighbor, accusing it of having combined troops on the border and readied warships and fighter jets ?in preparation for a large-scale conflict.”

The Burmese military brought in tanks, artillery guns and 13 warships along its border with Bangladesh on Sunday, The Bangladeshi Daily Star newspaper said, quoting sources at the Bangladeshi Armed Forces.

Bangladesh in turn has strengthened its military build-up in a bid to repulse an incursion by Burma and is preparing 30 warships in Chittagong and Khulna ports, a Bangladesh Navy official stationed at Chittagong told the newspaper.

Officially however, Dhaka sought to play things down over the Burmese insistence on erecting a border fence.

Bangladeshi Foreign Minister Dipu Moni rejected reports on Sunday on the heavy military build-up by Burma along the Bangladesh border, saying it was ?a routine movement of the security personnel.?

Talking to reporters at the Foreign Ministry, Dipu Moni said information gathered from the Bangladesh Ambassador and the Defence Attache in Myanmar, the Foreign Minister of Myanmar whom she met recently in Colombo and the Myanmar Ambassador in Dhaka suggest that the reports of the troops movement is not beyond the routine matter.

“But we notice that a section of the media is publishing reports with a negative attitude and there is question about the basis and objectivity of those reports,” she said, adding that publication of exaggerated news with distorted information cannot be good for the country.

Dipu Moni said it seems that certain quarters are trying to create problems or crisis between the two friendly neighboring countries with an ulterior motive to reap benefit out of it.

However, the newspaper said, ground reality did not support the foreign minister?s claim ?as various sources in the military, Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) and intelligence agencies said that the situation on the border remained tense?.

Dhaka fears problem on the sea front too. ?Burma has sent in artillery guns that will bring Chittagong under their firing range,? a Bangladeshi navy officer apparently told the newspaper.

?We in the Bangladesh Navy suspect that Burma wants to intrude into our sea and declare a large chunk of area as their Maritime Exclusive Zone,? the naval official said.

Bangladesh?s maritime borders with both Burma and India remain undefined and are a source of tension since all three neighbors want to explore for oil and gas in the Bay of Bengal.

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