Kathmandu, December 5:

The exports of Nepali readymade garments to the US, which is the single largest market, suffered heavily yet another month, as November saw a whopping decline of 63 per cent in terms of value.

It is the consecutive 11th month this year that the exports of Nepali textile and apparel products have lost its beat. The garment exports to the US has been suffering from the very beginning of this year as it witnessed a whopping decline of 54 per cent in January, 64 per cent in February, 47 per cent in March, three per cent in April, 63 per cent in May, 42 per cent in June, 45 per cent in July, 27 per cent in August, 34 per cent in September and 31 per cent in October.

The industry is already in doldrums for the last couple of years due to phase out of quota regime under the Agreement on Textiles and Clothing (ATC) from January 1, 2005.

The exports had suffered a loss of 30 per cent in 2004 and 41 per cent in 2005. However, it slowed down with a marginal drop of six per cent in 2006. As the US alone absorbs more than 80 per cent of the total Nepali garment exports, single country concentration is blamed to be one of the major causes for such a plummet.

The garments and apparel products valued over $7,15,011 were exported to the US in November, whereas the garment products worth over $1.95 million were exported in the same month last year, according to Garment Association of Nepal (GAN).

The continuous fall in exports indicates that the Nepali readymade garment industry is gradually on the verge of a ‘complete collapse’. An industry insider stressed on the need of enhancing competitive strength in terms of price and quality of the Nepali products to compete with big suppliers from India and China and other fervent players like Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Cambodia.

Besides building up the competitive strength, diversification of both the markets and products has remained a major challenge for the Nepali garment manufacturers and exporters.

While analysing the quantity of garments, Nepal exported during the month, it dropped from 43,351.5 kg in November 2006 to 7,300 kg this year.

However, a gradual increment of the exports to the EU and Canadian markets has a little rays of hopes to garment manufacturers and exporters. These two big and potential markets have already provided duty free access to the exports from the least developed countries (LDCs) including Nepal. Nepal’s share of garment exports to these markets is still as low as 20 per cent of the total exports.