Global restructuring processes, including two non-market factors, such as quotas under Multi Fibre Arrangement(MFA) (1974–2005) in the North American market and preferential market access to European markets, led to the "emergence of an export-oriented garment industry in Bangladesh in the late 1970s" and ensured the garment sector’s continual success.
The garment industry in Bangladesh became the main export sector and a major source of foreign exchange starting in 1980, and exported about $5 billion USD in 2002.
In 1980 an export processing zone was officially established in at the port of Chittagong.
By 1981, 300
embroidery digitizing textile companies, many small ones had been denationalized often returned to their original owners.
In 1982, shortly after coming to power following a bloodless coup, President Hussain Muhammad Ershadintroduced the New Industrial Policy (NPI), most significant move in the privatization process, which denationalized much of the textile industry, created export processing zones (EPZs) and encouraged direct foreign investment.
Under the New Industrial Policy (NPI) 33 jute mills and 27 textile mills were returned to their original owners.
The deities themselves and their human impersonators were recognizable by their
digitizing dress.
A good example of this is the Tonsured Maize God, who wore a netted over-skirt consisting of green jade beads and a belt consisting of a large spondylus shell covering the loins, and who was repeatedly impersonated by the king as well as the queen.
Since the 1980s, fiber work has become more and more conceptual, influenced by postmodernist ideas.
For fiber artists, in addition to long-standing experimentation with materials and techniques, this brought "a new focus on creating work which confronted cultural issues such as: gender feminism;domesticity and the repetitive tasks related to women's work; politics; the social and behavioral sciences; material specific concepts related to fiber's softness, permeability, drapability, and so on.