Jasmin Malik Chua | August 14, 2024
The acting president of Bangladesh’s apex trade group will not be “acting” for much longer.
Not that anyone is supposed to notice, according to a Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA) board member who was not authorized to speak on behalf of the organization, which represents the owners of 4,500 apparel-producing factories. ...
Samad, whose Forum faction ran against Kochi’s Sammilito Parishad in March, claimed that vote rigging through the use of fake members was responsible for the latter’s clean sweep of directorship positions. He conceded the election, he said, because of the “political environment of the country,” though he later filed a complaint with the Bangladeshi High Court, which asked the BGMEA to check the voter roll against valid tax IDs.
“But the attorney general of Bangladesh at the time—he’s just resigned—went and stood before the High Court and stayed the case,” Samad said. “So it was like, ‘Are you kidding me?’ I mean, the attorney general of the country of Bangladesh goes and stands for a case like this. It was very political because he’s a political guy, right?”
His biggest grouse with the current leadership, however, boils down to the sense of direction that he and other members say has been missing since its inauguration in April, denting Bangladesh’s reputation as the world’s second-largest garment exporter after China.
This isn’t mere conjecture, Samad said. Garment exports from the country to the United States, its No. 1 destination, have seen a year-over-year decline of 11 percent to $3.4 billion in the first half of 2024, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Office of Textiles and Apparel. A July benchmarking study from the U.S. Fashion Industry Association also found that only 48 percent of American brands and retailers planned to increase their sourcing from Bangladesh over the next two years, down from 58 percent in 2022.
“For the U.S. market, Bangladesh is not a plus-one country; China plus one is India, not Bangladesh—why is that?” Samad said. “Over the last five months, there’s been no work done for the industry, no strategy. The new president or the board did not even call us to talk. With all our experience, we could have helped him to formulate some good policies for the industry. It can’t be short-term only.”