No more foreign advices will be taken into consideration to reform the country’s ready-made garments (RMG) sector, BGMEA President Rubana Haq said at a workshop on Supply Chain Resilience of RMG Sectors in Bangladesh organized by the National Resilience Programme (NRP) held at Bangabandhu International Conference Center (BICC) on Wednesday.
“It cannot be described in words that how much money we have spent to bring a reform in the RMG sector to meet the foreigners’ directives. Enough is enough. And will not pay heed to their advice anymore,” she added. She said the North American Consumers association (Alliance) and the European Consumers’ Association (Accord) visited Bangladesh’s garment factories.
“We had a dispute with them (Alliance and Accord) about eight points. They convicted seven points. Thus we have been compelled to hire more foreigners to fulfil the left one point so that the garment sector be able to run operation without hindrance, she mentioned. Huq said, “For over a long time, we have not been able to build industry maintaining appropriate building code.
After the collapse of the Rana Plaza, we spent some $1.5 billion to buy only firefighting equipment, she mentioned. BGMEA President said the RMG sector has recently gone through tough times and witnessed negative growth. “It is easy to blame the government for these reasons, but we should have prepared ourselves to face the situation,” he added.
Rubana Haq said the government should emphasis all sectors to yield result from RMG sector. She said the country has set $50 billion export target by 2021 which is not a real prediction. She said we need to increase value addition of products to get better prices. If we export products at low prices, we will still be able to achieve the target of $50 billion by 2021, but in such circumstance, the country would not be able to reap benefit, she added.
Although the RMG accounted for more than 84 percent of the total export earnings, it contributes only 11 percent of GDP, she mentioned.
Rubana Haque said a proper study especially research work is needed to develop the garment sector and increased the value addition on the sector.
Planning Minister MA Mannan, Secretary of Planning Ministry Nurul Amin and head of Planning Commission's activities department Khalilur Rahman Khan were also present on the occasion.