Digital Product Passports and LDC Graduation: Traceability Readiness of Bangladesh's Ready-Made Garment Sector under the EU Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation

Bangladesh is scheduled to graduate from the United Nations Least Developed Country (LDC) category in November 2026, and its preferential access to the European Union under the Everything But Arms (EBA) arrangement will end after a three-year transition. In the same period, the EU's Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR), Regulation (EU) 2024/1781, introduces the Digital Product Passport (DPP), with textiles named among the first priority product groups. This working paper argues that the two shifts interact: once the tariff advantage narrows, the ability to supply verifiable product-level data becomes a larger part of what buyers pay for. We review the regulatory timeline, describe the data a textile DPP is likely to require, map those requirements onto the ready-made garment (RMG) production chain, and propose a five-level readiness model for factories. We argue that the main gap is not the passport itself but the absence of lot-level genealogy captured during production, and we outline a staged path that factories can begin before the textile delegated act is adopted. The paper is a conceptual and policy analysis; it does not report new empirical survey data. Intelactory Working Paper Series, WP-2026-01. https://intelactory.com