While Pakistan and India have experienced a substantial decline in apparel exports in the last seven months, their regional competitor Bangladesh has clocked a 14.3 percent increase in ready-made garment exports during the same period.
According to the statistics released by the Exports Promotion Bureau of Bangladesh, the country beat the target of $26.17 billion set for the first seven months of this fiscal year as exports of readymade garments clocked at $27.42 billion. The exports of RMG were $23.98 billion during the same period last year.
The knitwear exports surged by 12.7 percent to $14.96 billion and that of woven garments reached $12.46 billion clocking an increase of 16.3 percent during the period under review. Leather footwear exports did exhibit 4.12 percent growth, however, missed the set target by 6 percent to clock $431.6 million during the same period.
Bangladesh with 3500 garment factories is the second largest exporter of apparel in the world. It exports apparel to 167 countries. Only China is ahead in this field but Bangladesh is slowly reducing the gap. The apparel exporters of Bangladesh are optimistic to gain a 10 percent share of the global apparel market in 2023. Its apparel associations have assured the government of clocking $100 billion in exports by 2030. Its global share in 2021 stood at 6.2 percent.
Bangladesh and Vietnam were the only countries that were well prepared to benefit from the diversification of apparel sourcing from China. However, in the last seven months, Bangladesh has emerged as the only major garment supplier that posted robust export growth. Bangladesh looks well set to overtake China as the world’s leading supplier of apparel.
