Moinul Haque | New Age May 03,2020
The country’s readymade garment export plunged by almost 85 per cent year on year in April this year as the coronavirus outbreak in most of the countries disrupted the global supply chain and forced the manufacturers to suspend production.
According to the provisional data prepared by the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association compiling statistics from the National Board of Revenue, the RMG export in April this year declined by 84.86 per cent to $366.58 million from $2.42 billion in the same month of 2019.
Experts and exporters said that the country’s export business remained almost halted in April as the coronavirus pandemic disordered the economic activities in Europe and the United States, the major destinations for Bangladeshi RMG products.
They also said that global buyers cancelled or halted many export orders and the Bangladeshi manufacturers had failed to produce the rest of the orders as the factories remained closed for one month in April due to the pandemic.
According to the Export Promotion Bureau data, the RMG export in March, 2020 declined by 30.19 per cent to $1.97 billion from $2.82 billion in the same month of 2019.
‘It was estimated that the RMG export in April would decline by 70-80 per cent as economic activities on both the supply side and the demand side were disrupted due to the pandemic,’ Ahsan H Mansur, executive director of Policy Research Institute of Bangladesh, told New Age on Sunday.
He said that the country’s export performance in May also would be the same as April as many orders were cancelled and the placing of new orders remained halted due to the coronavirus outbreak.
‘We have to remain alert so that we would not miss the orders for the winter season to come back on track,’ Mansur said.
Based on the Export Promotion Bureau data for March and the NBR data for seven days in April, the BGMEA estimated that the RMG export in March-May this year might decrease by 56.93 per cent to $3.70 billion from $8.60 billion in the same period of last year.
The BGMEA also estimated that the exports in the month of April might drop by 70 per cent.
According to the apparel sector trade body, work orders worth more than $3 billion were cancelled or kept on hold till date since March.
