Competitiveness And Development Of The Exportation Of Bangladesh Garment Industry

The garment industry of Bangladesh has been growing enormously. The industry of garment and textiles in Bangladesh today has played a significant part in a Bangladeshi economic situation in which its export revenue is in a gradual increase in recent years. Since the middle of2000decade, this industry has a growth rate of nearly12%per year with high growth of employment generation. In the very recent years Bangladesh become the second largest garment exporter in world.Therefore, this incredible success story of the garment sector of Bangladesh motivates researchers to look back to identify the competitiveness factors that made Bangladesh as one of the major players in the global market.This study has qualitative approach. The qualitative approach was based on information collected through the use of questionnaires, surveys; and also with the primary and secondary data.A sum of80firms was interviewed with80questionnaires. This80questionnaire were designed for the managerial level of garment firms. Also20other questionnaires were designed for the low level worker of garment firms. These two different questionnaires helped to conducted interview for two different levels (managerial level and labor level) in the RMG sector of Bangladesh.This study considers the labor cost, labor force, electricity production, electricity cost, paved roads, lending interest rate, literacy rate, inflation, exchange rate, lead-time, and corporate tax rate as the macroeconomic factors, and availability of raw materials, compliance of international labor and environmental law, unrest labor, technological development, market diversification, functional upgrading, role of international buyers and market access policy as the industry specific factors for analyzing the growth of the industry. By the survey from questionnaire and the statistical analysis, the study provides results that the wage rate, corporate tax rate, market access policy, exchange rate, technological development, compliance of labor and environmental law, functional upgrading, international buyers and market diversification have contributed positively; while the infrastructure, interest rate, corruption, lead-time, availability of raw materials, government support, and labor unrest have contributed negatively.The study reveals that for being sustainable in the global market, Bangladesh Garment industry must improve those factors which have negative impact on the industry. Such as, as discussed, the infrastructure of Bangladesh is very deprived compare to other RMG exporter countries, by which the country’s RMG export has being interrupted. The social compliance also is not strong enough to create a good environment for the workers inside the firms, compare to other RMG exporter countries, which slowdowns the labor productivity.This thesis also finds the majority of the surveyed firms are private and the majority ownerships are domestic as well; which means the FDI in Bangladesh Garment Sector is very low. Therefore, it is the time for the government, industry firms and other garments oriented organizations to work together to improve the social compliance and to overcome the others limitations of this garment sector of the country to remaining competitive in the global market.