Merchandising of Men’s Shirt in Bangladesh – A Case Study

Bangladesh Global RMG Export Share in the EU and USA Market

 

Bangladesh RMG export market is greatly concentrated basically on two markets, one in the EU and another in the USA. Figure 12 shows that the EU accounted for more than 60 percent of global shares of Bangladesh’s total RMG experts over the 5 fiscal years. And in the fiscal year 2017-18, the market share reached 64.12 percent which is 6 percentage points more than the fiscal year 2013-14.

 

On the other hand, Figure 13 shows that Bangladesh’s export share in the USA market was in decline. In the fiscal year 2017-18, Bangladesh’s RMG export share in the USA market declined by 1 percentage point against the previous fiscal year.

 

However, from Fig. 12 and 13, it is postulated that in the fiscal year 2017-18, the EU and US, together, accounted for just over 81 percent share of the total global RMG export share of the country.

Challenges Of The Bangladesh Rmg Sector

The sector has some issues and chronic problems that are hindering it from gaining more competitiveness and enhancing export performance. The key challenges to the RMG sector include:

Higher Lead Time

Lead time is a crucial factor for sustaining the competitiveness of Bangladesh’s RMG sector with respect to its competitor countries. In this regard, Hider (2007) gives high emphasis on the reduction in total “production & distribution” time by reducing lead and identifies it as a critical issue for the competitiveness of Bangladesh RMG.

Critical Situation in Ease of Doing Business

İn the case of ease of doing business ranking 2019, Bangladesh ranked 176 with a score of 41.97, whilst the country’s neighboring RMG export competitor countries such as India ranked 77 (with score 67.23); Sri Lanka ranked 100 with a score of 61.22; Pakistan ranked 136 with score 55.31 (World Bank, Doing business 2019, Bangladesh).

Shortages of Industry-ready Skills

In case of skill gaps, the sector is facing the most severe skills gap compared to other sectors of the economy, and the existing skill gap in the RMG industry includes unskilled: 8,577; semi-skilled: 48,130 skilled: 119,479. And as a result of that, the country’s textile and RMG sectors have to depend on foreign employees due to this skills gap and shortages.

Risk in Sourcing Raw Materials

Among the imported raw materials, cotton is the most demanded and crucial raw material. Bangladesh’s RMG sector heavily depends on cotton leading it to be the world’s largest importer of cotton. In the year 2016, Bangladesh imported US$ 5275.67 million worth of cotton from the world cotton market, constituting a 10.8 percent share of world export.

Increasing Competition

In recent years, Bangladesh’s RMG sector is facing fierce competition from South Asian and southeast Asian neighbor countries like Vietnam, India, and Myanmar that are trying to emerge as major RMG exporting countries. Among these countries, India and Myanmar have already taken the necessary strategy to increase their share in the global RMG market.

Lesser Labor Productivity of Bangladesh among the Competing Countries

Asian Productivity Organization (2018) has defined the APO20 as consisting of 20 member economies of the Asian Productivity Organization, i.e., Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, Fiji, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Iran, Japan, South Korea, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Mongolia, Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Vietnam, and measured the productivity of these economies. According to the Asian Productivity Organization (2018), per worker productivities of Bangladesh and its competing countries in apparel manufacturing and exporting are shown in Table 26. From the table, it is observed that Bangladesh’s per-worker productivity (i.e., US$ 8600) is lower than all other competing countries except Cambodia (i.e., US$ 6200).

 

Table 25: Per Worker Productivity of Bangladesh and Its’ Apparel Exporting Competing Countries

On the other hand, as shown in Table 27, per hour labor productivity of each worker employed in Bangladesh is US$ 3.45, whereas the close competitors of Bangladesh, i.e., Vietnam, India, Hong Kong, Indonesia have per hour labor productivity per worker of US$ 4.09, US$ 6.41, US$ 44.27, US$ 9.98 respectively. And consequently, the lower labor productivity of Bangladesh hinders the optimal growth in industrial manufacturing thus there are scopes to work with the skills set of workers employed in the RMG sector to improve labor productivity.

 

Table 26: Per Hour Labor Productivity Per Worker in Bangladesh And Competing Countries

Global Competitiveness Of Bangladesh Rmg Sector

As shown in Table 28, China still dominates global RMG export in terms of market share, but its share drastically fell to 33.75 percent in 2016 compared to other previous years in the same time period. And for Bangladesh, its global RMG market share reached 7.50 percent in 2016 and it increased by 2.72 percentage points from 2012 to 2016, indicating an increase in competitiveness. Whereas in the case of Vietnam, its global RMG market share stood at 5.72 percent in 2016, and it increased by 2.24 percentage points in the last 5 years, making the country the third-largest exporter in the global RMG market.

Though, on the other hand, for India and Spain, their market share increased, but not as rapidly as Bangladesh and Vietnam. At the same time, the countries that have gradually lost their market share over the same period of time including Germany, and Hong Kong. And simultaneously, the countries that have experienced continuous fluctuation in their export market share include Italy, Turkey, and France.

 

Table 27: Bangladesh and the Major Exporting Countries’ Global Market Share (Value expressed in % term)