bd/views-reviews/attaining-competitiveness-in-rmg-1517147332
Bangladesh garment industries still making non -brand, traditional and low
cost garments without much change in design and test. This sector is
surviving without any proper R&D and innovat ion.
Competitiveness has been taken up with top priority by the World Bank and
other organisations. They use to study and publish annual report on
competitiveness of most of the countries. Some of these reports are by
UNCTAD's World Investment Report (WIR), and the Global Competitiveness
Reports, published by the World Economic Forum.
The Global Innovation Index 2017 measures Banglade sh's ranking at 114 in
the Global Innovation Index (GII) in 2017 among 127 countries. The country
was ranked 99 out of 137 countries in the Global Competitiveness Index
(GCI) 2017-18 by the World Economic Forum. In 2016, global FDI flows
decreased by 2 per cent to $1.75 trillion owing to weak economic growth and
significant policy risks perceived by multinational enterprises.
Bangladesh promotes its RMG products to the global buyers branding itself
as the "source of cheapest labour", although cost of labour is not the main
indicator of competitiveness. The means of competitiveness consists of
management, technology and skill of labour. Among the drivers of
competitive industrial performance and capability are the t echnological effort
as shown by research and development expenditures by productive
enterprises or technology imports and infrastructure.
So it proves that so far, policy support, not competitiveness, has driven the
RMG sector towards the growth trajectory.