Notwithstanding the uncertainties caused by the coronavirus pandemic and its various other fallouts, Bangladesh continues to remain a major supplier in the eyes of the global brands and would remain so in the coming months as well!
This is as per the findings of the joint study carried out by the Bangladesh-based Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) and Sri Lanka’s the Institute of Policy Studies (IPS).
Research Director of the CPD, Golam Moazzem and, a research economist at the IPS, Kithmina Hewage underlined this in their joint presentation at a recent webinar on ‘Recovery of the apparel sectors of Bangladesh and Sri Lanka: is a value-chain-based solution possible?’, while also presenting various other interesting findings.
As per the CPD-IPS joint study, major sourcing countries have either re-shored or over-concentrated to a limited number of sourcing countries during the pandemic period even as it went on to underline that ‘there is a limited level of initiatives of major market players to keep the suppliers of major sourcing countries and the world of work in uncertainty to address the medium-term challenges’, and going on to add that there is significant shift in the distribution of export orders by buyers during the January–June 2020 (the covid period), which has deprived several major supplying countries, including Sri Lanka and Bangladesh and highlighted that Bangladesh’s share in knitwear markets fell from 8 per cent in the pre-pandemic level to 6 per cent in June last year even if the country’s share in the woven segment declined from 7 per cent to 6 per cent during the period.
