Recovery of the apparels sectors of Bangladesh and Sri Lanka from the COVID-19 crisis: Is a value chain based solution possible?

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a major disruption to the global apparel value chain and has delayed its recovery in the medium term. Innovative strategies and tools that address medium-term challenges are needed to tackle prolonged periods of demand slump.

This study explored a value chain based solution for Bangladesh and Sri Lanka in which the major market players adopt responsible business practices (RBPs) for sustainable recovery. It found that during the pandemic period major sourcing countries either reshored or over-concentrated on a limited number of sourcing countries. The major market players took too few initiatives to address the medium-term challenges or to retain the suppliers of major sourcing countries and a ‘world of work’ in uncertainty. A major shift in the distribution of buyers’ export orders during the COVID-19 period (January to June 2020) deprived several major supplying countries of market share, including Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

The analysis showed that if the pre-COVID market share of export orders could be maintained in the case of the largest supplying country, China, an additional USD 2 billion worth of orders could be redistributed to supplying countries. This study suggests that in the case of a major global crisis, a redistributive approach should be taken to ensure that export orders remain at least at the pre-crisis levels, particularly for countries that have fiscal constraints and weak social support programmes for their suppliers and workers.