Business

Bangladesh’s Textile & Apparel exports registered 12.7 percent growth in FY 2012-13

Bangladesh, one of the favorite destinations for Readymade Garments sourcing, especially by European Union (EU) and US has shown significant improvement in its export figures in the recently concluded financial year. The country registered Textile and Apparel export figure of US$ 21.516 billion during FY 2012-13 (July –June). This is a significant jump of 12.7% over the FY 2011-12 export values of US$ 19.09 billion. The country is showing excellent results in textile and apparel exports in spite of the slowdown in major markets and their focus to grow export to nontraditional markets yielding results.

While the country’s export figures grew at double digit, its import of raw materials grew a meager 0.65% during the 2012-13 fiscal to US$ 8.227 billion. Since production of garment products needs bulk of raw materials, the country imports sizable amount of fibers, yarns, fabrics and accessories. The figures released by the Bangladesh Ministry of Commerce, during FY 2012-13 Bangladesh imported raw cotton worth US$ 1.913 billion which is 6.45% lower than the previous year’s figure of US$ 2.044 billion. Though the absolute quantity imported by the country during the FY 2012-13 (July-June) is not available, it is to be noted that average cotton prices during this period was significantly lower than the previous year (July, 2011 - June 2012 period). Similarly, Synthetic/Viscose fiber imports in FY 2012-13 have witnessed a fall of 30.84 per cent to US$ 75.13 million compared to US$ 108.73 million in 2011-12. On the other hand, Cotton yarns and Fabrics import value grew 2.43% and 6.76 % respectively during the FY 2012-13, which in value terms translate to US$ 915.91 million and US$ 4909.89 million. Bangladesh’s textile industry, in spite of having a robust backward integration, has not been able to invest in capacity building due to the shortages of power and high interest cost over the last two years. The statistics indicates that textile machinery import in FY 2012-13 was just US$ 349.49 million registering a negative growth of 11.84%. This has resulted in higher import dependency on yarn and fabrics by the garment manufacturers.