Garment export tumbles double-digit
Kantipur Report
Kantipur Online, NepalÂ
KATHMANDU, March 18 – As political instability and the tarai unrest continued to drive away buyers and hit timely delivery of orders, the Nepali garment industry – employing over 10,000 people – suffered a double-digit decline
in exports in February
this year.
The data of the Garment Association – Nepal (GAN) shows that Nepali readymade garment manufacturers exported a mere US$ 2.01 million worth of products to the US, the largest apparel market, in February. During the same month last year, exports amounted to US $2.33 million.
Exports entered a downturn mainly because of the tarai unrest, which brought trade through tarai-based customs to a standstill for 16 days, said entrepreneurs. Otherwise, exports had grown by 2 percent in January to US $2.65 million, and entrepreneurs had more export orders than what was shipped.
Apart from affecting purchase orders already received, entrepreneurs said the banda once again eroded the confidence of international buyers in the country’s capacity to make deliveries on time. This has placed future orders at risk, they added.
GAN’s cumulative data shows that exports of the country’s once largest exportable commodity amounted to a mere US $4.66 million during the first two months of the year. The performance represented a drop of 5 percent compared to the same period last year.
Nepal’s readymade garment exports to the largest garment market had been floundering since 2002, when the US provided duty-free market access to Caribbean and Sub-Saharan countries – Nepal’s main competitors for the American market.
While the phase-out of quotas in international apparel trading in 2005 proved another blow for Nepal’s garment producers, political instability, labor stir and falling competitiveness further weakened the base and drastically shrank the industry.
GAN’s year-wise export data reveals that Nepal’s exports to the US plummeted 70 percent in 2004, 41 percent in 2005, 6 percent in 2014 and 48 percent in 2014 compared to the previous year.
During this period, the number of factories in operation dropped from more than a hundred to about one and a half dozen, and employment in the sector plunged from 60,000 to just over 10,000.
