Sri Lanka’s apparel sector shows potential to achieve US$ 6 billion in exports in 2020
An expert in Sri Lanka’s apparel industry has reportedly said that the country has the potential to achieve US$ 6 billion in apparel exports in 2020 by capitalizing on automation to get premium prices for the country’s apparel exports with high-quality apparels.
“If you can move to automation, we can do precision cutting, we can manufacture high quality, which means we can get higher prices. With a small number of people, we can produce higher quality apparels. That’s what MAS and Brandix are doing,” DMS Garment Technologies (Pvt.) Ltd Managing Director Ruvan Ranatunga has told the local media recently.
He has noted that automation would help to fast track the export targets of Sri Lanka’s apparel industry.
According to the local media report, Sri Lanka’s apparel industry has set a medium-term export target of US$ 8 billion by 2025, after achieving US$ 5 billion in apparel exports last year for the first time.
Ranatunga has made these observations to Mirror Business on the sidelines of an event organised by DMS Garment Technologies (Pvt.) Ltd along with Gerber Technology for their partners in Colombo recently.
Meanwhile, Gerber Technology CEO Mohit Uberoi has noted that Sri Lanka has many opportunities to take up on automation as it’s mostly the top apparel manufacturing firms in the country that have been utilising automation. Hence, he insisted that the lower end firms could rely on automation for high value addition while bringing down their costs affiliated to labour-intensive manufacturing.
OSL take:
The statement by one of Sri Lanka’s apparel industry experts is a clear indication of the continuously growing business/investment opportunities in the country’s apparel exports sector. The need to capitalize on automation and the target of US$ 6 billion in apparel exports earnings is a beckoning call for foreign businesses/investors to explore business/investment opportunities in Sri Lanka.
| Article Code : | VBS/AT/03052019/Z_1 |