Bangladesh’s textile industry accounts for nearly 79% of export earnings and employs 3.5 million people. Almost 30% of Bangladesh’s industrial sector GDP is fuelled by the USD 17.9 billion industry. The International Finance Corporation has been working on the PACT program, the main objective of which is to help SMEs in textile sector adopt cleaner production practices. Low level of awareness among SMEs and unavailability of local expertise is a big constraint in these projects.

 

IFC together with ASSIST, engaged in this activity to provide guidance to a few local consultancy firms shortlisted by IFC to deliver CP projects to SMEs in Dhaka and Chittagong, to help in building a local talent pool as well as make the services affordable for the local industry in the future. The overall goal of this assignment, through this activity, was to enhance the long-term competitiveness and sustainability of the textile wet processing sector in Bangladesh. The programme additionally focused on water as the primary driver for change but, also addressed energy and chemical use (water-energy chemical nexus) for an integrated approach to resource efficiency.

 

Local consultant capacity building; training on report writing and document preparation; conducting walk-through audits; formulating baseline assessments and debriefing on cleaner production for the top management were some of the activities implemented as a part of this project.