Bangladesh can meet only three per cent of its garment industry’s demand for cotton. The rest needs to be imported that makes Bangladesh one of the largest cotton importers in the world. To meet the growing demand of the garment industry, currently the country has to spend some $4.5 billion a year on import of cotton.

Now, the country has taken an initiative to increase raw cotton production specifically Genetically Modified Organism cotton or BT cotton. As the harmful pest bollworm is the main impediment in raising cotton production in the conventional method, Bangladesh has initiated biotechnology based BT cultivation to boost cotton production. But this has to be done in such a way that food production is not hampered.

Training has been provided to 60,000 farmers on modern cotton cultivation and 3,050 demonstration plots have been set up under a project for increasing cotton production in the country. Bangladesh hopes to produce a million bales of cotton on 2,00,000 hectares of land and save on some 15 per cent of import costs.

Cotton is the main raw material for textile industries. The country has 5000 garment factories and 450 spinning mills. Bangladesh produced 0.16 million bales of cotton in 2016-17 fiscal.