During the mentioned 8 months period, country’s total Ready-Made Garments (RMG) exports to the world reached US$ 31.99 billion from US$ 29.83 billion in the corresponding period of previous year, showing 7.27% growth.
The European Union (EU) played a major role in this overall growth, being Bangladesh’s largest RMG export destination. Our RMG export to EU increased by 5.96% during the mentioned period, with a total export value of US$ 15.87 billion during January-August 2023, which was US$ 14.97 billion during the same period a year earlier.
Among the 27 member countries of EU, Germany, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia posted negative growth, while the remaining 21 countries demonstrated positive growth in their imports from Bangladesh during this period.
Germany, our largest market in EU region, has shown a decline of 13.75% to US$ 4.22 billion in Jan-Aug 2023 from US$ 4.89 billion in Jan-Aug 2022. At the same time, exports to Poland also declined by 3.41% and reached US$ 1.29 billion from US$ 1.32 billion.
On the other hand, our export to three major markets in EU namely Spain, France and Italy increased by 21.40%, 13.72%, and 28.63% respectively. And during Jan-Aug 2023 period, Bangladesh’s apparel export to Spain, France and Italy reached US$ 2.60 billion, US$ 1.93 billion and US$ 1.47 billion respectively.
During the mentioned period of time, Bangladesh witnessed a decrease of 8.08% in export to USA, dropping to US$ 5.69 billion from US$ 6.21 billion. Conversely, our exports to the UK and Canada experienced positive growths of 13.60 % and 6.79% respectively, with exports amounting to US$ 3.60 billion and US$ 1.05 billion.
Apart from the traditional markets, our export to the new markets continues to grow, which reached US$ 5.80 billion in Jan-Aug 2023 from US$ 4.52 billion in Jan-Aug 2022, showing 28.31% growth. Among the non-traditional markets, our export to Japan, Australia, India, Turkey and Brazil have shown impressive growth by 44.47%, 53.54%, 20.20%, 34.62%, and 74.32% respectively. In contrast, export to United Arab Emirates and Chile have declined by 4.99% and 8.10% respectively.
