Bangladesh may fail to meet readymade garment export targets. Reasons include: rising cost of doing business and mounting conflict between workers and owners on wages. Workers’ protests have sparked clashes between police and workers and killed at least one worker and wounded dozens more.

The country’s readymade garment industry accounts for 80 per cent of Bangladesh’s merchandise export earnings and serves some of the biggest brands in the world. Bangladesh raised the minimum monthly wage for the garment sector’s four million workers by 51 per cent from December. But workers say their raise was less than this and unions, which warn the strikes may spread, say the hike fails to compensate for price rises in recent years.

Wages were hiked after five years. But in five years the cost of living has increased more than the wage hike. However, rising trade disputes between the US and China have opened the window of opportunity for Bangladesh to increase exports. China, the world’s largest exporter of apparel, is seeing its apparel companies migrate to countries with cheaper labor costs. US sanctions on Chinese technology companies are expected to accelerate the trend. Another advantage Bangladesh has is cheap labor costs.