Bangladesh: Shortage Of Labor Skills Leads To Bottlenecks In Garment Industry Development

The development of the garment industry is crucial to the social and economic development of Bangladesh in the future. The clothing industry provides more than 4 million of the employment opportunities, of which 70% are women.

At present, Bangladesh's clothing industry is facing a bottleneck. How can it maintain its competitive edge and continue its export myths?

Rapid development is already an important part of exports.

Reporters learned from foreign media reports that in 1984 Bangladesh's clothing exports were only 3 million 200 thousand dollars, up to 25 billion US dollars in 2014, accounting for more than 3/4 of export revenue.

In Bangladesh,

It has been an important driving force for promoting economic development and providing employment opportunities.

The clothing industry provides more than 4 million jobs, of which 70% are women.

More than 50% of the manufacturing labor force serves the garment industry, while the labor force in the manufacturing industry accounts for 30%.

Therefore, in the past twenty years, the success of Bangladesh garment industry is the epitome of the development of manufacturing industry.

There is no doubt that the development of Bangladesh's garment industry has benefited from the large number of cheap and skilled labor force in the country.

But its neighbors, such as India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and China, also have a large number of cheap and skilled labor force. Why can Bangladesh maintain its competitive advantage and continue its export growth? In fact, Bangladesh's clothing industry is also facing many problems, such as: developing high cost, weak infrastructure, poor governance and labour riots, but local businesses are thriving.

Even though it is developing well, it is also faced with compliance problems and work safety problems.

In particular, in the past few years, these two issues have been particularly prominent and international pressure, because if the above problems can not be further improved, the western countries will abolish many favorable market policies.

Compared with the price advantage, the quality advantage is getting more and more attention.

The highlight of these problems is also an opportunity for Bangladesh. If properly resolved, it will enhance its reputation in the international market.

So the priority problems include: Workers' wages, workplace safety, fringe benefits, working environment and so on.

In addition, the training of workers should also be strengthened, and the production capacity can be improved by improving working skills.

Bangladesh garment manufacturers export association, government and relevant international organizations should strengthen cooperation.

At present, Bangladesh's clothing industry is facing a bottleneck. How can it maintain its competitive advantage and continue its export myth? It is bound to be infeasible according to the traditional way. In fact, Bangladesh's core competitiveness is labor force, and the advantage is static.

As competition becomes more and more intense, Bangladesh should generate dynamic comparative advantage for sustainable development in the future.

We need to improve workers' skills, enhance labour productivity, introduce new technologies, encourage innovation and reduce operating costs.

Comparative advantage does not necessarily plate into competitive advantage.

Because in the context of high operating costs, if we want to maintain competitive advantage, we must reduce the wages and benefits of workers.

Therefore, in order to maintain the relative advantage of labor force, we should minimize operating costs.

The most prominent problem is the long time from ordering to delivery, and the low efficiency of port and inland pportation aggravates the seriousness of the problem.

In addition, lack of investment capital and liquidity, high interest rates,

The poor public security and the invisible cost of doing business are also factors impeding export development.

These questions will determine the competitive advantage of Bangladesh's garment industry and export.

All these problems need strategic planning and perfect implementation.

The development of the garment industry is very important to the social and economic development of Bangladesh in the future. Therefore, the relationship between the development of clothing exports and poverty alleviation has not been fully proved. But from the data, we can see that with the growth of clothing exports and the development of the overall economy, the poverty problem has been alleviated.

Because the development of clothing export has created a large number of job opportunities. At the same time, the problem of workers' wages and welfare is also related to the development of the garment industry.