BANGLADESH CANVAS
Japan: Bangladesh knit manufacturers expecting big orders for Olympics’ 20
Bangladesh’ s knit manufacturers are expecting a big order of cotton-made sports and fashion items from Japan on the occasion of 2020 Summer Olympics where millions are expected to converge.
Expectations have arisen after Bangladesh put on a big show at the Tokyo Fashion World 2018, the largest comprehensive fashion event of Japan, recently.
The Summer Olympics 2020, Tokyo, will be held from 27 July 2020 to 9 August 2020. The international event is expected to draw millions of visitors and tourists from all over the world. It is expected they will be in need of big volume of knitwear items like T-shirts, polo shirts and sweaters.
“ We are expecting a huge order for the Olympics from Japan. We are hoping orders will start to come from next year. It will boost our exports to the country,” Fazlee Shamim Ehsan, second Vice President of Bangladesh Knitwear Manufacturers and Exporters Association( BKMEA), told Apparel Online.
Furthermore, he added that the main economic viability of the possibility rests on the current high prices of Chinasourced apparel items.“ We produce apparel items lower in cost than China. Before our participation in the fair, Japan did not know that we could produce such high-end items at low cost,” he shared.
BKMEA insiders say that after the Tokyo Fashion World 2018 exposition, a meeting was held between BKMEA and Japan’ s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, which has spun new hopes for the Bangladeshi knit makers. And, during the fair, a spot order of US $ 25 million was received.
Now, after such overwhelming response, knit makers think that exports to the country will gain momentum. Recently, a press release issued by the BKMEA said that Japan has assured that it will continue to give stage-one GSP facility for the knit manufacturers of Bangladesh.
Meanwhile, Japan began 2018 with a massive drop in its apparel imports both in volumes and values. During January, the country’ s imports tumbled 11.44 per cent in volumes, whereas values were down by 10.15 per cent on the Y-o-Y basis.
According to Apparel Online’ s in-depth analysis, Japan spent more money to import apparels in the first month of 2018. The UVR of imported apparels was Yen 460, up 2.22 per cent from the UVR of last year’ s corresponding month at Yen 450.
Over the years, Japanese consumer’ s apparel spending has been greatly affected by factors such as tax increment, ageing population and low disposable income. These factors have resulted in price-sensitivity among the Japanese customers, further causing a change in purchasing pattern, and simultaneously in the apparel industry of Japan.
As a consequence, even the major apparel exporters could not do well in their respective exports to Japan. China was down significantly in volume-wise apparel exports to the third-largest economy of the world by 16.49 per cent. On the other hand, values too tumbled by 19.14 per cent.
During the review period, India fell both in its volume-wise and value-wise apparel exports to Japan by 5.40 per cent and 1.65 per cent, respectively.
Bangladesh’ s export performance was no different than China and India. Apparel exports to Japan during the review period dropped by 2.25 per cent in volumes and 4.63 per cent in values. The country noted decline in both knitted and woven segments.
Interestingly, Vietnam performed remarkably well surpassing all other nations( in percentage-wise growth) in apparel exports to Japan as the South- East Asian manufacturing powerhouse grew by 10.84 per cent in volumes, whereas the country got a 10.07 per cent boost in the export value.
38 Apparel Online Bangladesh | JUNE 2018 | www. apparelresources. com