Bangladesh’s garment trade hit hard by concerns over Dhaka airport security

by Payload Asia

Security concerns over Bangladesh’s Dhaka Shahjalal International Airport are threatening impacting imports and exports, particularly the country’s lucrative garment trade. A recent ban by the Australian government on certain types of air cargo going Down Under has badly dented Bangladesh’s ready-made garment trade.

Similarly, the UK Civil Aviation Authority urged Bangladesh in January to adopt new security measures within the next three months, insisting on a “three-layer security system” for Dhaka-London flights.

The Australian government in late December dramatically tightened the rules on air cargo – imposing a ban on all air cargo imports over 500gms that originated in, or transited through a number of countries – among them Syria, Egypt, Somalia, Yemen and Bangladesh. The ban hit an expanding garment trade with Bangladesh especially hard.

“Australia is a potential new market for Bangladesh RMG. Bangladesh’s RMG export to Australia in 2014-15 was US$533.63 million. Bangladesh’s RMG export to Australia almost tripled in last five years and in the last year the growth was about 24 per cent,” an official with trade body, the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers & Exporters Association (BGMEA) told Payload Asia.

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The industry response has been threefold: Shift to sea freight, “which is causing much delay,” the official added, or secondly go through another airport.

A spokesman for the Australian Federation of International Forwarders (AFIF), told Payload Asia: “For urgent consignments, the best solution found to date is airfreighting the goods as normal from Bangladesh to either Hong Kong or Singapore, then importing and customs clearing the goods at those intermediate airports, followed by re-exporting by air to Australia, having undergone approved security screening at the intermediate airport.”

The third way is lobbying, where AFIF gets strong support from both the manufacturers and the Dhaka government. “BGMEA already requested the Government of Bangladesh to take up the issue with the Government of Australia for solution,” the BGMEA official added.

The Dhaka airport authority has installed new scanning equipment, but garment manufacturers are complaining that imports of raw materials are being delayed up to two weeks and the ban by Australia remains in place.