Bangladesh garment manufacturers’ continuing demand to increase the prices of apparels exported from the country, was reiterated once again when the country’s Commerce Minister Tofail Ahmed on Tuesday called upon the buyers to consider the same.
“Most of the factories in Bangladesh are going to turn into green factories while problems related to child labour have been eliminated and the labour law has been amended and initiatives taken to hike wages through commission,” Tofail reportedly maintained while underlining that price of Bangladeshi apparel products in the global market was yet to see any increase despite the fact that there has been a marked improvement in terms of work environment, in tandem with factory modernisation and a hike in the workers’ wage.
The Minister made this remark at a discussion meeting titled ‘Capacity Building of Remediation Coordination Cell (RCC): Sharing Process and Way Forward’ as the chief guest in Dhaka.
It may be mentioned here that apparel manufacturers have long been demanding better price points for RMG products in view of the rising manufacturing cost, increasing overheads, hike in labour wages and raw materials, which they maintain have cut down profit margins drastically, leaving less scope for further growth and development of the sector.
“Since the Rana Plaza incident, lot of progress have been made, minimum wage has been raised, but the prices of products have not been increased yet, although a lot of investment was made by the factory owners towards remediation and achieving better manufacturing practices,” maintained a prominent garment exporter, speaking to Apparel Online.
