Practices in Garments Industry_A Case Study of Alana Group

Introduction

Background of the study

The perfect coordination between theory and practice is of paramount importance in the context of the modern business world in order to resolve the dichotomy between the theoretical and practical areas. Any academic course of the study has a great value when it has particular application in the real life. Only theoretical knowledge bears little importance unless it is applicable to the practical life. When theoretical knowledge is obtained from a course study it is only the halfway of the subject matter. So we need proper application of our knowledge to get some benefits from our theoretical knowledge and to make it more fruitful. Such application is made possible through internship. For the completion of this internship program, the author of the study was placed in a Garments organization namely, “ALANA Group  Ltd . Internship Program brings a student closer to the real life situation and thereby helps to launch a career with some prior experience
The readymade garments (RMG) industry ofBangladesh is the most important export oriented industry of the country.  In 2004, the sector’s contribution to GDP was 9.11% alone while the share of the total export of the country was 12.18% only (Bangladesh Bank, 2005).  The export of RMG has been the driver of the enhanced contribution of the export to the GDP over the last two decades (Siddiqi, 2004).

 

In the beginning of the 1980s,Bangladesh’s export stood at US$0.9 billion, which increased to US$1.8 billion in 1990, and then, to US$6.5 billion a decade later.  The annual average growth of real exports in 1980s was slightly higher than the real GDP rate of 3.4% (Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, 2002).  However, it was in the 1990s when the country’s growth rate of real exports went at a faster pace: 12.5% as against the real GDP growth rate of 4.8%.  The increasing share of RMG exports drove such a growth of export and increasing share of export in GDP in the total export. In 1985, the RMG export constituted only about 12% and increased to an average of 65% in the 90s.  In 2002, the sector directly employed 1.5 million people out of which 80% was female (Rashid, 2005; Siddiqi, 2004).

 

A close look at the composition of RMG export ofBangladeshover the last two decades reveals that the woven garments sub-sector constituted the lion’s share.  In fact, the beginning of the development of RMG sector started with woven garments in 1985.  In the first half the 90s, the share of woven garments was above 80%.  However, the share gradually started to decline to about 70% in five years late and to 62% in 2004 and to 38.80% in