Bangladesh's exports rose 2.5 per cent in September from a year earlier driven by an increase in garment shipments. Garments are a key foreign-exchange earner for Bangladesh, where low wages and duty-free access to western markets have helped make it the world’s second-largest apparel exporter after China.
For the first quarter of the 2015/16 financial year, exports rose nearly one per cent from the previous year. Sales of readymade garments, comprising knitwear and woven items, were up 3.3 per cent in the July-September period from the year-earlier period.
Exports in the fiscal year ending in June rose 3.35 per cent from a year earlier, but that was the slowest growth since 2002, and garment sales, while higher, missed their target.
In a disturbing development, two foreigners were shot dead a few days ago in Bangladesh. There are some fears that the violence could threaten the garment industry, with exporters saying western buyers had begun to cancel visits. The garment industry, which supplies to many brands such as Walmart, JC Penney and H&M, has already been in the spotlight over several fatal accidents, such as the 2013 collapse of a building housing factories that killed more than 1,130 people and fire calamity that again claimed several lives.
