The eight-lane highway leading from the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka, narrows repeatedly as it approaches this town about 30 miles north, eventually depositing cars onto a muddy, potholed lane bordered by mangroves and small shops.
But this is no mere rural backwater. It is the sort of
place to which foreign manufacturers may increasingly turn, if the rising wage demands of factory workers in China prompt companies to seek new pools of cheap labour elsewhere.
Already, in factories behind steel gates and tall concrete walls, tens of thousands of workers, most of them women, spend their days stitching T-shirts, pants and sweaters for Wal-Mart, H&M, Zara and other Western retailers and brands.
One of the Bangladeshi companies here, the DBL Group, employs 9,000 people making T-shirts and other knitwear. Business has been so good that it is finishing a new 10-storey building.
As costs have risen in China, long the world’s shop floor, it is slowly losing work to countries like Bangladesh, Vietnam and Cambodia — at least for cheaper, labour-intensive goods like casual clothes, toys and simple electronics that do not necessarily require literate workers and can tolerate unreliable transportation systems and electrical grids.
Li & Fung, a Hong Kong company that handles sourcing and apparel manufacturing for companies like Wal-Mart and Liz Claiborne, reported that its production in Bangladesh jumped 20 per cent last year, while China, its biggest supplier, slid 5 per cent.
The flow of jobs to poorer countries started even before recent labour unrest in China led to big pay raises for many factory workers there — and before changes in Beijing’s currency policy that could also raise the costs of Chinese exports. Now, though, economists expect the migration of China’s low-paying jobs to accelerate.
The New York Times