After remittance, Bangladesh exports fall too

After the fall in remittance, Bangladesh has suffered another blow as exports have dropped by 4.5 percent in February compared to the same month the previous year.

The export earnings in February this year - a little over $2.72 billion - also missed the target by around 10 percent.

In February, last year, the export earnings crossed $2.85 billion. The target for this year's February was over $3.01 billion. 

Many have blamed fall in prices of garments, the primary source of export earnings for Bangladesh, in Europe and the US for this.

Mahmud Hasan Khan Babu, a vice-president of Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA), told bdnews24.com on Wednesday: "There is a downtrend in exports because of the drops in prices of garments in the US and Europe."

"We hoped the exports would grow more than 10 percent this fiscal like the previous one. But it seems now that we will be able to post a growth much lesser than the previous financial year," he added.

According to the BGMEA, prices of Bangladeshi garments dropped in the US by 3.81 percent in 2015 and 1.1 percent last year. In the 28-country European Union, the prices declined by 0.76 percent in 2015 and 3.19 percent in the following year.

According to Export Promotion Bureau (EPB) data released on Wednesday, Bangladesh exported goods worth over $22.83 billion in the first eight months (July-February) of the current 2016-17 fiscal year.

This is 3.22 percent more than the earnings in the same period previous financial year, but missed the target by 5.08 percent. This fiscal year's export target is $37 billion.

The readymade garments sector contributed around 82 percent to the total export earnings in the July-February period.

The export of garment products grew by 2.82 percent but missed the target by around 6 percent.

The amount earned by the garment sector through export in this period was around $18.44 billion. It was $18.12 billion the same period last fiscal year.

According to the Bangladesh Bank, the remittance in this period dropped by 17 percent than the same period last fiscal.

In the July-February period, Bangladesh exported leather and leather products worth $827.6 million, jute and jute products $646.6 million, agricultural products $352.6 million, frozen food $357.5 million, engineering products $330 million, and plastic products $82.3 million.