A continual fall of exports of the Nepali ready-made garments to the United States continued for yet another month, as the month of May 2007 saw a massive decline of 60 percent in exports, reported the local media website THT Wednesday.

This is the fifth consecutive month this year that the exports of Nepali textile and apparel products lost its upbeat. The garment export to the United States has been suffering from the very beginning of the year, as it witnessed a whopping decline of 54 percent in January, 64 percent in February, 47 percent in March and three percent in April.

The industry is in doldrums for the last couple of years, which further suffered following the termination of quota regime under multi-fiber arrangement (MFA) in January 2005.

The exports suffered a loss of 30 percent in 2004 and rose to 41 percent in 2005. However, it slowed down with a marginal drop of six percent in 2006. As the United States alone absorbs more than 80 percent of the total Nepali garment exports, single market concentration is blamed to be one of the reasons for such a plummet.

The garments and apparel products valued over 2.25 million U.S. dollars were exported to the United States in May 2007, whereas the garment products worth over 5.60 million U.S. dollars were exported last year, according to the figures provided by the Garment Association of Nepal (GAN) Wednesday.

The continuous fall in exports indicates a difficult time ahead for the Nepali garment manufacturers and exporters, as the markets have already been opened for all the competitors without quota restrictions, said an exporter.

He called for enhancing competitive strength of the Nepali products to compete with big suppliers from India and China and other fervent players like Bangladesh and Pakistan.