You are the one who is denying the elephant in the room.
I don't mean to demean Indonesia either, but I doubt you have ever worked at a manufacturing company or much less owned one, no offense. Otherwise you wouldn't even come back with the rather weak logic you presented.
In the business of making low cost products, labor cost is everything. Please let that soak in for a couple of minutes.....
Buyers move orders from one country to another for 4 cents a shirt.
Now go back, look at the labor cost in each country (including yours), then come present me something believable.
None of the five countries I mentioned can compete with the likes of middle or higher labor cost producers like Korea, Taiwan, Eastern Europe or now, China.
Indonesia is not the Netherlands. In fact HDI indicators in Indonesia is worse than in Bangladesh.
Minimum wage per month in Bangladesh is Tk.5300 or 65.732 US Dollar.
Minimum wage per month in Indonesia is IDR.3,355,750.00 or 252.141659 US Dollar or roughly four times the wage rate of Bangladesh.
http://www.wageindicator.org/main/salary/minimum-wage/indonesia
Let me know how this adds up.
And about the 'Quality of manpower' story you put up about workers in other countries being smarter or more skilled than in Bangladesh, that is really racist and offensive.
Bangladeshi girls can make anything Indonesian girls can.....Bangladesh is the second largest garments exporter and fourth largest denim exporter in the world.
You are defending an inveterate flamer of all Bangladeshi threads, irrespective of merit. If you support him just because he happens to claim that he's Indian (or worse, because he flames us), I have nothing to say. He has been banned multiple times for his disrespectful behavior, and people like that have very little respect in my book, for that reason alone. If you come in here and argue with respect, I will return it in kind. His behavior, not so much. He has a lot of hard lessons to learn in life....
On topic, the qualitative difference between low cost labor in Bangladesh and India may not be that pronounced. However our labor cost is still HALF of yours. That alone speaks volumes about where Chinese (as well as Taiwanese and Korean) sunset industry low wage jobs have headed for the last two decades and will be heading. However other than low wage manufacturing, we don't have a lot common with India in manufacturing scenario. India has a lot of higher value addition manufacturing such as automobiles that we don't want to get into yet. We need to give enough jobs to the millions of lower class people, whom we actually care about.
Propaganda in consulting firms aside, Chinese low wage jobs will be going to places like Bangladesh first, given that buyers and Walmart customers obviously care about the cost of the final product. Low wage and low value addition jobs will remain Bangladesh' Forte for the time being, which suits us just dandy, Thank You.
Of course we have middle-class IT and pharmaceutical knowledge jobs too, which are growing faster than a lot of other countries in Asia.
And re: automation, I'm well read on this and can tell you that automation cannot replace people in low wage jobs like making, shoes, apparel, toys, kitchen items, home appliances and electronics as well as small electrics like fans, irons, blenders, toasters, coffee makers etc.
I do not read everyone of Nilgiri's posts. His previous post was factual and polite.
What products are exactly low cost ? Textiles ?? Did you have something else in mind ?
I work making automated systems for a living. You are in for a rude shock if you think automation will not impact Bangladesh.