Bangladesh’s exports

Bangladesh’s exports achieved a growth rate of 4.8% for the FY10 (year-to-year). The positive trend continued in the first two months of FY11 with a growth rate of 28.8%. Exports of readymade garments, the most important export item of the country, grew at 1.2% in FY10, which is the slowest growth rate since FY02, while the volume of manufactured goods increased by a rate of 5.2%.

The global recession caused a drop in retail sales in Bangladesh’s main export destinations (EU and USA). During the period May-July of FY10, exports of readymade garments to the US and Germany – the two largest export markets – declined by 4.1% and 7.9% respectively.

In addition to the slow recovery of most of the major export destinations for Bangladesh the labour unrest, shortage of power and natural gas supplies, poor transport and logistics systems and disruption at the Chittagong main port for an extended period of time have been a few domestic problems which contributed to this phenomena.

Recently some leading Bangladeshi readymade garment and textiles manufacturers have started aggressive expansion of production capacities which showed a higher production volume than the volume could be exported. This access volume of readymade garments are expected to be cleared slowly but surely as increasing number of international buyers find suppliers in Bangladesh.

The total export volume for FY10 has been recorded at 11.68 bln Euro by the Export promotion Bureau of Bangladesh of which 10.51 bln Euro or 89.95% were exported to the top 20 countries and nine items made 91.31% of the total export.

Germany is the 2^nd largest export destination for Bangladesh. Parallel to the general pattern of Bangladeshi export items 95.19% of its total export to Germany was generated from the readymade garment sector.