During January-March period of 2023, our apparel export to the European Union increased by 3.69% in dollar values (from US$ 5.89 billion in January-March period of 2022 to US$ 6.10 billion in January-March period of 2023). Among the major markets in EU, export to Germany declined by 16.77% year-over-year, while exports to France and Spain grew by 12.35% and 20.96% year-over-year respectively. Our export to Germany, France and Spain reached US$ 1.69 billion, US$ 727.77 million and US$ 989.79 million respectively. On the other hand, our apparel export to other major countries in EU region such as Poland, Austria, Slovenia, Latvia, and Lithuania dropped by 9.10%, 8.55%, 39.14%, 26.92%, and 45.50% year-over-year respectively.
During the mentioned period, our apparel export to USA was US$ 1.98 billion, registering about 16% year-over-year decline in growth. Besides, our exports to U.K. reached US$ 1.45 billion with 14.04% growth while our export to Canada saw a decline of 2.36% year-over-year basis.
Though the apparel export to our major markets declined during the first three months of 2023, our export to the non-traditional markets showed encouraging rise, i.e. 39.25% growth (to US$2.40 billion from US$ 1.72 billion). Among the major non-traditional markets, our exports to Japan, India, Australia, Turkey, Brazil and South Korea have shown 45.86%, 77.75%, 64.56%, 80.71%, 95.96% and 33.43% year-on-year growth respectively.
BGMEA is working to facilitate the exploration of new markets, as well as we are working on policy reforms to facilitate and simplify business. 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 the longer term.
