Apparel shipments to Japan on sharp increase

http://www.newagebd.com/2010/apr/14/busi.html#1

Apparel shipments to Japan on sharp increase

A file photo shows a garment worker is working at a factory in Narsingdhi. — AFP photo

Kazi Azizul Islam

While Bangladesh’s apparel shipments to its major markets, the USA and EU, are either static or declining, shipments to Japan have risen continuously this year, said industry watchers.

Quoting the latest report, officials of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association said that the country’s apparel shipments to Japan in the Jan-Feb period of the current year amounted to 1,383 million yen or $25 million.

In terms of value, the shipments have grown by more than one hundred per cent over the same period of the previous year. The amount of export was around $12 million in Jan-Feb last year.

Bangladesh’s apparel shipments, annually amounting to $12 billion plus globally, were less than $40 million to Japan in 2007. Annual shipments increased to $52 million in 2008 but in 2009 increased sharply to about $125 million.

‘Bangladeshi exporters are increasingly getting larger volumes of orders,’ one exporter of jeans told New Age.

Takashi Suzuki, the president of the Japan Bangladesh Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said, ‘Bangladesh’s apparel shipments to Japan will grow more and more and more in the coming days.’

He told New Age that jeans, shirts and sweaters made in Bangladesh are being admired by the Japanese shoppers and are being showcased by top Japanese retailers like Uniqlo and Shimamura.

The Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association’s president, Abdus Salam Murshedy, said that the high growth in shipments to Japan has provided a ray of hope to the industry as exports to Western markets have been dull in recent months.

‘Maybe the amount of our apparel exports there (Japan) is still small but the Japanese importers’ growing confidence in us has made the industry optimistic that we will have a bigger share of the Japanese market in the next few years,’ he added.

Murshedy informed New Age that a market promotion delegation of the BGMEA would visit Japan next month in order to find new openings in that market and interact with the buyers there.

Japan imports $28 billion worth of apparels and China, the biggest supplier, controls 80 per cent of the market. Vietnam, which exports garments worth $1 billion to Japan, stands as the second largest supplier, followed by Indonesia, India and Myanmar.

Local knitwear exporters told New Age that growth in shipments would have been more if Japan’s rules of origin on knitwear imports had been less stringent.

The Bangladesh Knitwear Manufacturers and Exporters Association’s president, Fazlul Hoque, said that Japan’s rules with regard to duty-free access of goods from Bangladesh and other developing countries require that even the knitwear yarns are produced locally.

‘As the special yarns that are required to make fashionable knitwear and hosiery are mostly unavailable in Bangladesh, Japanese imp-orters are reluctant to import them because they won’t get the benefit of duty-free access,’ Hoque pointed out.

‘The Bangladesh government should persuade the Japanese government to relax the rules of origin for knitwear shipments,’ said Hoque, who led at least two market promotion delegations to Japan last year.