Bangladesh’s textile and apparel industry has attracted scholars and policymakers’ attention from across the world, feels Tofail Ahmed, Commerce Minister. This is because of women’s employment, increasing contribution to the country’s poverty reduction and the country’s healthy export performance in the last three decades. Bangladesh is now the world’s second-largest exporter of RMG and the sector is also the country’s leading export earner and garner’s $25.5 billion or 82 per cent of total exports.

After the US, Germany is the second-largest export destination of Bangladeshi products. It shares around 16 per cent of the total export earnings. Bangladesh’s export to Germany amounted to $5012.45 million in 2014-15 and over the last two years exports to Germany has grown significantly, giving rise to favourable trade with Bangladesh.

Bangladesh now has plans to reach $50 billion exports from RMG and apparel industry by 2021. Bangladesh’s strong performance, is because of the advantages the country has in terms of price and capacity and liberalisation of the RMG sector through phasing out of quota and duty free access provided by the major trading nations of the world.