DHAKA: In the first 11 months of 2017, Bangladesh exported garment items worth $26.40 billion, up 1.38 percent year-on-year, according to data from the Export Promotion Bureau. At the start of the year, the greenback traded between Tk 78 and Tk 79 and during the course of the year it crawled up. On December 20, it traded at Tk 83.20.
“The current exchange rate is favourable for exporters. We should handle the exchange rate softly,” said Ahsan H Mansur, executive director of the Policy Research Institute of Bangladesh. He went on to suggest that the dollar can be allowed to appreciate to up to Tk 85. “The exchange rate has only started becoming export-friendly,” said Faruque Hassan, managing director of Giant Apparels, a leading garment exporter. The local currency should be devalued further against the dollar to compensate for the rising cost of production such that exporters can continue to be competitive on the global stage. At least 10 percent devaluation of the currency is fine for the sector as garment exporters have faced low exchange rate over the last five years, he added. “The exchange rate is still not up to the mark when compared with our competing countries like India and Turkey,” said Abdus Salam Murshedy, managing director of Envoy Group, another major garment exporter.
Apart from the favourable exchange rate, the rising shipment of value-added items, brighter image of Bangladesh’s garment sector after remediation works, relative political calm and automation of production also helped prop up garment exports in 2017.
“The outgoing year was good for us,” Murshedy said, adding that the absence of any major untoward incident like labour or political unrest was a boon for the apparel exporters.
