There are several causes for the poor performance of garment export from Nepal now a day. The main obstacles in the development of Nepal’s foreign trade with other countries are included as follows
The main problem of garment sector is lack of raw materials and skilled and efficient manpower. The garment industry required variety of inputs. Materials for the garments and skilled manpower for designing, cutting, pattern making and stitching garments are the most important ones among them. But unit today none of these inputs have been in ample supply within the country
Readymade garments industry basically has to depend on different required materials such as fabrics, threads, zippers, buttons, and labels and so on. Everything from the fabrics to the threads, sewing machine and needles has to be imported from another country. The locally produced fabrics and do not meet the standard required for the production so that the testing or production is also not as good in quality as compare to another countries
Skilled manpower as labor inputs in another crucial factor for the development of garment industry and this also had to be imported from the neighboring country India till now
Another problem of garment industry in the product and readymade garment industry’s export market has not been diversified equally. The exporters have not been able to tap the market potential other then the USA. Over 90% of the garments exports go to the USA. This is not good for Nepalese garment industry, because if this market is lost the whole industry would collapse. Thus it is necessary to explore new market for future prospective. Till now most of the garment producers depends upon Indian agent for their market abroad. So the producers should also develop direct contact with the prospective buyers. Nepalese producers must actively channels and low cost suppliers if they seek to penetrate new market
Nepal’s position as exporter of readymade garments could be questionable of strict quality control system, are not measured and implemented. In Nepal garmentsmanufacturing methodological and procedures are mostly based on traditional system i.e. the time to go for production of high quality and should be the more appropriate for this industry.
The main problem of Nepalese garment industry in phasing out of Multi Fiber Agreement (MFA) in taxable and clothing trade as agreed upon the GATT policy. Within ten years the GATT accord intends to fully phase out the bilateral agreement on these products which has been facility developing nations. The gradual phasing out of the MFA accord will make export quota, like the US has been allocating to exporting nations, will be meaningless. This means preferential treatment through quotas would be terminated and non discriminations quill come in to force globally. This intends to give equal opportunities to all exporting nations resulting in higher degree of competition on the world trade. In such a situation it could be much more difficult for Nepal to grab world market as it does no posses any particular input which gives comparative advantages. Thus, from all the above mentioned problems of garments any one can conclude that the garment industry in facing one of the worst crisis night at the moment. The government and the entrepreneurs should work out the strategy, short term as well as long term strategies for sustaining and development of garment industry.
(Agencies )
