Over one-third of Bangladesh’s mills and factories are running below their production capacity. Production is hampered by political unrest and a crisis of gas, electricity and fuel. These units are having to temporarily layoff labor or keep them idle.

The total number of industrial units those are fully privately owned in the country is 44,231 at present, and this is 98.68 per cent of the entire number of industrial establishments.103 factories out of these are completely government-owned, other than that there are 263 foreign, 263 foreign-local joint ventures and 35 government-private joint investment factories.

The textile and food sectors are the main driving forces of the economy. About two-thirds of the country’s industries are in these sectors. Forty-two per cent of the production is in the textile sector. There are 17,967 factories in this sector. This includes 6,984 readymade garment factories. And there are a total of 8,441 food production factories.

The highest number of workers is employed in the garment industry. A total of two million 762 thousand workers are employed in 6,984 garment factories. Of these, 9.5 million are women. The textile industry employs the second largest number of workers. There are 8,00,000 workers employed in this sector. The food industry comes up third, employing 2,80,000 workers.