The 15th Dhaka International Textile and Garments Machinery Exhibition (DTG 2018), the largest exposition of the country's textile and garment industry machinery, started at Bangabandhu International Conference Centre (BICC) in the capital on Thursday.
State Minister for Finance and Planning MA Mannan inaugurated the four-day exposition as the chief guest while BTMA acting president Mohammad Ali Khokon was present as the special guest. Bangladesh Textile Mills Association (BTMA) and Yorkers Trade and Marketing Service Company Limited have jointly organised the event.
Addressing the inaugural function, MA Mannan said the government has been trying to resolve power crisis in the country and it significantly increased power generation to resolve the crisis.
"The government and readymade garments manufacturers are jointly working to attain $50 billion export from RMG sector by 2021 and we will be able to do that," he said.
Speaking at the programme, Mohammad Ali Khokon said investment in textile sector has slowed down in recent times. This is mainly due to inadequate supply of gas and power, and unavailability of land.
"Though improvement has taken place in the power sector but this is not enough to run our heavy industry like textile. There is still huge deficit in gas sector which has become a major concern for our primary textile sector," he said
Mentioning that the first edition of DTG was held in 2004, he said it has become an increasingly significant textile and garment event in Bangladesh.
The number of enquiries regarding participation in the exposition is rising, he said, adding it is definitely pleasing to inform that participating enterprises earned spot business orders worth around US $250 million in last year's exhibition.
"Responses are so enormous that it has become extremely difficult for us to accommodate the request of all interested parties in setting up their booths/stalls in the present expo venue," he informed.
He said the country's local entrepreneurs will get excellent opportunities to see for themselves the variety of latest machinery, technology and everything related to the entire supply chain in this sector.
"I hope that, local investors will avail this opportunity to the fullest extent to choose the most appropriate technology for new investment to raise production efficiency with cost minimisation and thereby maintaining the competition edge."
A total of 1100 world class leading machinery manufacturing companies from more than 36 countries across the world are participating in the DTG 2018.
The countries are Austria, India, Bangladesh, Belgium, China, Denmark, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, UK, US, and Vietnam.
They are exhibiting machinery covering whole areas of textile and garment industry supply chain, including spinning, weaving, knitting, dyeing, printing, finishing, testing, washing, embroidery, sewing, etc.
