The RMG industry has become one of the life lines of Bangladesh economy. Jute industry was once the life lines of our export oriented economy. The role of garment industry is now paramount in that place. As a result, we can't help but be happy and hopeful about any good news of this ready-made garment industry. It is a promising news for the country that cargo ships are going directly from the main seaport of Chittagong to the port of Ravenna, Italy.
Container ship named 'MV Tsonga Cheetah' arrives at Chattogram port on Saturday and and it will leave for Italy on February 6. The ship arrived at Chittagong port with 945 TEUs of empty containers and seven TEUs containers filled with capital machinery. 963 TEUs containers will be taken on the way 98% of these are readymade garments. The ship has ready-made garments ordered from Italian buyers as well as buyers from several other European countries.
The Covid-19 caused deep damage to Bangladesh's export-oriented trade. After this, when the corona situation improved a bit, one after another orders of readymade garments started coming from abroad. But exporters need to wait for a long time to book ships from those ports that increases the time and cost of shipping. Our exports go from Chittagong Port to Singapore, Colombo in Sri Lanka, Kelang and Tenjung Pelapas in Malaysia and a few Chinese ports.
Due to the inability of mother vessel to reach deeper ports in Chittagong, the goods have to be transported to all the ports in medium and small ships carrying export goods. From there, our cargo containers are shipped to various destinations in the world, including Europe and America. It takes more time and cost. This is a big obstacle. With the launch of Bay Terminal and the Matarbari deep-sea port, this problem will be solved.
Many people consider Chittagong port as a river port. Large ships are not able to come to Chittagong port for this. However, cargo ships have not been operated directly in Europe on small ships so as not to be financially profitable. We import less from all the countries to which we export goods. This ship was also carrying a number of empty containers when it arrived Prior to this, a ship made a test voyage directly from Chittagong to Europe last December. From now two ships will operate on the new route every month.
Our ability to compete with other countries will undoubtedly increase as our products reach our customers faster. New horizons will appear in the export of goods. We wish success to this initiative of exporting goods directly even in small ships. Therefore, we need to gradually increase the number of ships on the Chittagong-Italy route.
