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Mortal fire in Bangladesh

May 9, 2013 Bangladesh

About the potential future of Bangladesh hangs the threat of a serious reaction to the labor and safety; as a result of the tragic accident that occurred recently in confection companies. This led to a serious image crisis and rethink by the EU and the U.S. System of Preferences.

Only in two weeks, Bangladesh suffered two tragedies in clothing sector. If the country overcome the challenges with infrastructure, security and energy, can take hugged advantage of its labor costs to become the "next China".Two weeks after the landslides that killed more than 1000 people, a textile factory burned. The fire occurred in the industrial district of Mirpur in Dhaka, and killed eight people.The previous tragedy, also in a building that housed a textile factory, provoked the revolt in the country against the conditions of the structures of the textile sector.However, only two weeks later, another textile mill burned. Early reports indicate that the fire started after the time of departure of most of the employees, which contributed to the death total was not as high.

This fire came a day after the government of Bangladesh, in an attempt to calm the population, closed 18 clothing factories in the country - 16 of them just in the capital - for security reasons.Although export growth is recovering from a slow start of the fiscal year 2013 (an increase of 9.4% in the first eight months), is expected to remain below the average growth of the past five years - on the order of 14 4%.The World Bank report emphasizes "impressive growth" in exports of goods except clothing - including shoes, leather and jute goods - but notes that the share of exports in these product categories remained static at around 20.6%.

The export trends are dominated by anemic demand in the U.S. and EU markets, two extremely important markets which represented 71.7% of Bangladesh´s exports in the first eight months of 2013. Exports to the EU and the U.S. grew 6.5% and 4.7%, respectively, during the period in question. But there were some signs of market diversification, with other countries - among which are Russia, Japan, South Africa, Brazil and China - accounting for 28.3% of exports, up from 26% in the same period fiscal year 2012.Bangladesh is the country with the lowest costs of production in the garment industry worldwide. As such, companies from other countries settle their production in Bangladesh.

According to data from NGWF (National Association of garment workers in Bangladesh), the past 15 years the accidents in textile factories at the Bangladesh (fires or landslides) 3,000 wounded and more thousands of deads. Note that the textile sector is among the leading exporters of the country.Recent disasters have shown that there is much to do to circumvent the poor working conditions and safety labor intensive industries across the globe.

Bangladesh