Agence France Presse

Dhaka, May 9:

The Bangladeshi pioneer of micro-credit loans said he has lobbied the US Congress for duty-free access for textile products from the world’s 14 poorest countries to stave off stiff competition from China.

Mohammed Yunus, the founder-chairman of micro-lending pioneer Grameen Bank, said he had just returned from Washington where he urged US lawmakers to pass legislation this year that lets the 14 poorest countries, including Bangladesh, sell textiles duty free to the US.

“We need duty-free access of Bangladeshi textiles to the US, if we want to save millions of jobs here,” Yunus said after returning from the US capital.

Five months after the end of global textile export quotas on January 1, concern is growing that China will grab a lion’s share of the business with its cheap labour and extensive infrastructure to ship products.

Chinese textile exports to the US reached $3.5 billion in the first three months of the new trade regime, up by 70.5 per cent from the same period last year, while exports to the EU rose by 48 per cent to $3.9 billion.

“The garment industries employ 1.5 million women. A slowdown in the sector will be disastrous for not only to these poor girls, who have nowhere to go, but also to entire country,” said Yunus.

There are an estimated 3,800 garment factories in Bangladesh that account for more than three-fourths of country’s $7.7 billion dollars in exports. Around a third of the population of 140 million people live on less than a dollar a day.

While wages are in line with China, Bangladesh lacks the port and transport facilities built up by China in the past decade to ship goods quickly.

Yunus said he received support from several lawmakers in the US including senators John McCain and Hillary Clinton.

In the first three months after the end of the multi-fibre arrangement (MFA) in textile trade, Bangladesh exported garments worth $1.5 billion, or 9.5 per cent more than the first quarter of 2004.

But sales of the country’s biggest export earner, woven garments such as jeans, fell by 5.6 per cent.