Bangladesh’s apparel exports to the United States in January-September of current year increased by 5.84 per cent to $4.16 billion from $3.93 billion in the same period last year.
The country’s textile and apparel export to the US in first nine months of current year totalled $4.34 billion with 5.63 per cent growth from $4.11 billion in the same period last year, according to the data of the Office of Textiles and Apparel under the US Department of Commerce released on Friday.
Terming the export growth positive, exporters observe that export orders from US to Bangladesh increased little bit in recent times.
They said that the ongoing trade war between the US and China created huge opportunity for Bangladesh to grab large volume of orders from the US and the export to the market would rise more in the coming days.
According to the data, in value base textile and apparel export, Bangladesh remains in the fourth position in the US market while the position of the county was sixth in volume base export.
In volume, Bangladesh’s export to the US in the first nine months of 2018 grew by 3.56 per cent to 1.82 billion square metres from $ 1.76 square metre in the same period last year.
In value base export, China remains in the first position in the US market followed by Vietnam and India.
Although, the US was the largest export destination for Bangladeshi textile and readymade garment, the country (Bangladesh) meet only 5.02 per cent of total textile and apparel import value of the US.
The OTEXA data shows that the US import of textile and apparel in the January-September period of 2018 grew by 4.49 per cent to $83.35 billion from $79.77 billion in the same period last year.
The US import of textile and apparel from China in the period grew by 3.47 per cent to $30.01 billion while import from Vietnam stood at $9.80 billion with 6.93 per cent growth.
Textile and apparel export of India in the January-September period of this year stood at $5.89 billion with 2.95 per cent growth from $5.72 billion in the same period of 2017.
‘The apparel export growth in the US market is positive and we are happy with the growth. I think RMG export to US market from Bangladesh would increase more in coming days,’ former Bangladesh Knitwear Manufacturers and Exporters Association president Fazlul Haque told New Age on Saturday.
He said that ongoing trade ware between the US and China created opportunity for Bangladesh to obtain more
export order from the US buyers.
‘Although the volume is insignificant, the US brands and retailers have already started shifting their orders to Bangladesh from China. If the US imposes duty on Chinese textile and apparel, a huge volume of orders will be shifted to Bangladesh,’ Fazlu remarked.
‘As per the data, the textile and apparel export of India to the US is higher than Bangladesh but if we calculate the export of only RMG products, Bangladesh is far ahead of India,’ he claimed.
According to the OTEXA data, the US import of textile and apparel products were 50.77 billion square metre equivalents in January-September of 2018, an increase of 4.9 per cent from year-to-date September 2017.
Imports of textiles were 29.80 billion square metre equivalents with an increase of 7.2 per cent from the year-to-date September 2017 while apparel imports in the period were 20.97 billion square metre equivalents which was 1.8 per cent up from the same period of last year.

New Age