First of all, I would like to congratulate the Bangladesh test cricket team for beating Afghanistan in the Test match in Dhaka by 546 runs. This is the highest victory margin ever in our Test match history and third highest in the format’s history. My best wishes to team Tiger.
The OTEXA has published the data on United States apparel import for the period of January-April 2023 and we have calculated the year-on-year progress. In this mail, I am sharing a brief analysis on the USA’s overall apparel imports from the world as well as from the top sourcing countries.
As per the data published by Otexa, USA’s apparel import from the world has declined by 22.15%, i.e. from US$ 32.38 billion in January-April 2022 to US$ 25.21 billion in January-April 2023. If we look at the volume wise data, USA’s import has slowed down by 31.09% which is equivalent to 7.59 billion Square Meter Equivalent (SME).
All the top apparel import sources of USA including China, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Indonesia and India have shown significant decline in terms of both value and volume; however the decline was less from Bangladesh compared to others.
During the mentioned period, USA’s import from Bangladesh dropped by 17.88% in dollar values and 30.49% in quantity, whereas their 4-months import from the world saw a decline by 22.15% in dollar values and 31.09% in quantity terms (Square Meter Equivalent).
USA’s import from China, the largest apparel import source, has declined by 32.45% in dollar terms and 34.74 % in terms of quantity.
USA’s import from Vietnam, the second largest source of apparel import, has also shown negative growth of 27.33% in dollar values and dropped by 33.67% in quantity.
At the same time, negative growth was observed in case of other top sourcing countries such as: Indonesia at 25.57%, India at 16.59%, Mexico at 6.92%, Cambodia at 34.53%, and Pakistan at 29.73%.
As far as unit price per SME (Square Meter Equivalent) is concerned, USA’s aggregate unit value of import from the world has increased by 12.98% in January-April 2023, and this increase from Bangladesh is recorded the highest by 18.14%. This reflects our continued transformation of the industry penetrating higher value segment of the market. Though the increased unit value reflects raw material and production price hike, the increase in unit value substantiates our investments in higher value added and in non-cotton items. Given the transformation of the industry in greener, cleaner and responsible manufacturing and investments in technology and higher value capability, we have more untapped opportunities in the US market and we need to put more efforts to explore those.
