Bangladesh garment manufacturers and exporters are exploring the Japanese knitwear market. Among Japan’s knitwear imports, Bangladesh has only a three per cent market share. Vietnamese apparels have grabbed the largest share of Japanese market.

With Japanese concerns about product quality, and their heavy dependence on China, Japan’s market was not open to Bangladesh for a long time. Now, China’s shift to a capital-intensive industry and Japan’s China-plus policy has created immense export opportunities for Bangladesh and it hopes to be a top knitwear supplier to Japan. The knits sector is growing in Bangladesh with strong backward linkages. The country hopes to increase its exports by 25 per cent by 2020.

Huge orders are expected to come from Japan during the Summer Olympic Games, to be held from July 20 to August 9, 2020, for knitwear products like T-shirts, polo shirts and sweaters. And Bangladesh hopes to get a huge chunk of these orders.

Japanese investors are interested in an economic zone coming up in Bangladesh and a delegation will visit Bangladesh in November to explore investment potential in the country. Currently, the number of Japanese investors in Bangladesh is 350, of which many are big multinational companies.