Japan has a mechanism for providing soft loans to small and medium garment enterprises in Bangladesh. However, many apparel units find themselves disqualified as their factories have been constructed in violation of national building code. The fund was created to assist small and medium readymade garment factories in becoming earthquake-resistant by means of restructuring and retrofitting.

Many of these factories have not approved their designs ever or have made deviations from the factory design. The national building code was adopted in 2006. Many garment factory owners say their structures came up before that. Readymade garment factories in Bangladesh have been set up over a period of 36 years.

Among the criteria for the loan are that the factory location should be in and around Dhaka city. The workforce should be below 2,000 and the factory should not be located in a rented building. The Japanese fund was created to support readymade garment factories in making their buildings safe. It does not guide them on compliance with factory safety but provides them total assistance including construction mechanism, checking factory buildings, design, engineering and so on. The target of the fund is to help transfer technology and make the units quake-resistant.