Bangladesh has earned the position of being the third largest exporter of clothes to the US market, following after China and Vietnam.
Even though the efforts to contain the coronavirus are successfully ongoing, the gaping hole that the pandemic has left behind in the business sector is going to be hard to fill. Clothing products being globally exported to the USA dropped down to one-fourth in 2020. An improvement has been observed in 2021 but the Bangladesh is still stuck in the havoc due to the new Covid Variant in Bangladesh which scared off the US market resulting in a 14% order drop. This has raised concern among the manufacturers as there is no tentative time for recovery.
If the situation of Covid-19 doesn’t rapidly improve, exports of RMG may be down trend.
According to OTEXA, US customers import $64.07 billion (6,407 crore) of clothing products in the year 2020. In the first two months of 2021, US imports of clothing fell by 13,85 percent to $ 10,91 billion. In the first two months of 2021 the export of Bangladeshi clothing to the United States dropped to 1 billion dollars (100 crore) of clothing equivalent to Tk 85 billion (8500 crore).
In January-February 2021, Vietnam’s exports to the US decreased by 12.9% to $2.09 billion. In January and February 2021, India’s exports of clothing goods to the U.S. fell by 21.89% to 590 million dollars (59 crore).
