The garment manufac-turers of the country demanded single digit interest rate for the sector and reducing other charges to a tolerable level so that they could attain com-petitiveness in the global market .

“The interest rate has been reduced to 13 percent from 16 percent, but the rate is still high. We recommend reducing the rate to single digit for the garment sector,” Abdus salam Murshedy, president of Bangla-desh Garment Manu-facturers’ and Entrepreneurs’ Asso-ciation (BGMEA), said while addre-ssing at a function yesterday at BGMEA Bhaban in the city.

The function was or-ganised for giving certi-ficates among the parti-cipants of a ICC workshop on ‘Incoterms-2010’.

The governor of Bangladesh Bank Dr Atiur Rahman attended the programme as chief guest while the president of International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), Bangladesh Mahbubur Rahman and chairman of ICCB Commi-ssion on Banking Tech-nique and Practice Mamun Rashid also spoke.

BGMEA president said the sector upheld its growth despite facing many challen-ges including inade-quate power supply and inefficient operation Chitta-gong port, the main sea port of the country.

“In addition to facing challenges, we started imple-menting of minimum wage for the workers which marked 81 percent increase in labour cost,” said Abdus Salam Murshedy.

He urged the BB governor to open the existing housing fund to finance the construction of the dor-mitories for the workers.

Dr Atiur Rahman assured of all-out cooperation to the garment entrepreneurs adding that “the BB will address the bank related problems of the sector.”