THE IMPACT OF ONE BELT ONE ROAD INITIATIVE IN THE GARMENT SECTOR OF BANGLADESH

As the second largest garments producer and exporter in the world market after china, Bangladesh?s readymade garment industry is one of the most important sector among others sectors, which serves a big market all over the world. Ready-made garments (RMG) of Bangladesh is considered as the backbone of its economy and has a great prospect to become the leading garment producer and exporter in the world market near future. Considering the biggest initiative of OBOR by Chinese government also known as New Silk Road initiative, which will be connected with more than 60 countries and sixty percent of total population in the world, Bangladesh is considered as a very important land both geographically and economically and has already declared to join in this initiative. While in recent years, the production cost of apparel in china is increasing very high and the opportunity cost of garments production is much higher than Bangladesh. So many buyers and producers are looking for a new destination for their investments and apparel business. In this situation OBOR initiative could be a window of opportunity as foreign direct investment (FDI) especially for RMG industry of Bangladesh. This paper focuses to find out what will be the impact of OBOR initiative on Bangladesh?s economy specifically on garment sectors, and how Bangladesh will be benefited from this project, beside what steps Bangladesh government should be taken to make it meaningful.