The number of 'mini garment industries' has been maintaining a steady rise in Syedpur upazila of Bangladesh under the country's northern Nilphamari district. At present, there are more than 200 such industries, almost all of which are located in and around Syedpur municipality area.
Most of the small-scale and home-grown industrial units, dubbed as mini garment industries, comprise five to 25 traditional sewing machines. Insiders and local businessmen say roughly 5,000 employees work in different shifts in these units predominantly aiming to export their products to West Bengal of India, Bhutan, and Nepal.
Sources say that the production cost of these mini factories is relatively low as they preferably use stock-lot and waste cut pieces of cloth usually collected from the large ready-made garments (RMG) industries in Dhaka, Gazipur and Chittagong. This is used to make shirts, T-shirts, jackets, trousers and allied items.
However, the sources inform that this year these mini industries exported garment items worth Tk 3.6 billion to Siliguri and Jalpaiguri of West Bangal in India along with destinations in Nepal and Bhutan. The export figure is reported to be increasing every year as the mini industries exported to the tune of Tk 2.7 billion during the corresponding period of last year.
Although these tiny units are contributing substantially to the country's export basket, they still remain deprived of the country's statutory body Export Promotion Bureau's (EPB) membership. On this, local chamber leaders and traders lamented that they were seeking the EPB membership for so long.
