During the mentioned period, our apparel export to the European Union increased by 31.51%, that is from US$ 11.98 billion to US$ 15.76 billion in July-March 2020-21. Germany being the largest European market fetched US$ 5.37 billion with 27.77% growth compared to the same period of previous year. Export to other major EU countries like Poland, Spain, France, and Italy have shown growth by 40.90%, 38.33%, 33.90%, and 22.68% respectively.
RMG export to USA during the mentioned period was US$ 6.58 billion, registering 53% year over year growth. Besides, our exports to U.K. and Canada have grown by 27.53% and 30% respectively compared to the same time of previous fiscal year. Our export to U.K. reached to US$ 3.37 billion in this time, up from US$ 2.64 billion in July-March 2020-21.
At the same time, export to the non-traditional markets (all countries excluding EU, USA, U.K., Canada) increased to US$ 4.78 billion from US$ 3.84 billion in the same period of time. Among the major non-traditional markets, Japan is our top export destination and our export to Japan reached 849.64 million dollars during the mentioned period. The other non-traditional markets having high growth were Chile 132.73%, Mexico 76.93%, India 58.07%, South Korea 31.34%, Brazil 23.12%, South Africa 23.21%, and Turkey 22.77%.
The growth we achieved so far is the result of sacrifices made by the industry, the resilience we have shown in all the crises and the commitment. In the last few years, we made huge progress in the areas of responsible and sustainable manufacturing which have earned confidence on us. However, we need to look beyond the conventional pattern of business and growth, and prioritize investments in technologies, modernization, skills, efficiency, diversification in product range, which will add more value to our business and competitiveness.
BGMEA is working to facilitate exploration of new markets and to retain preferential market access. Thanks to the Government for the extraordinary support to explore non-traditional markets, which came at the persuasion of BGMEA. This has helped grow our export to non-traditional markets from less than a billion dollars to 5 billion dollars in last 12 years. Our efforts will be continued, and it’s time for all of us in the industry to promote and highlight our strengths in new products and new markets before the global customers (existing and new ones) to explore new opportunities. That will help sustain our growth in longer term.
