Overall export earnings amount to $12.94b in 10 months

The revenue from exports grew by 19 per cent in April compared to last April, pulling the overall export growth to positive zone in 10 months.
Export Promotion Bureau officials on Tuesday said the overall export which was negative in the first nine months of the current financial year turned positive with a 19 per cent increase in export in April compared to last April.
In the 10 months of the current fiscal year, the country’s export shipment amounted to $12.94 billion, which is 1 per cent more than the earnings of the same period in the last fiscal year.

The monthly export performance report of the bureau showed that garment exports, which account for more than three-fourths of the country’s export earnings, diminished by 1.72 per cent to $9.96 billion in ten months.
The average rate of growth of export earnings from the major products improved but still remains in minus figures, but growth figures for some products like jute goods and petroleum by-products were very high.
Knitwear export diminished by 2.06 per cent
to $5.12 billion in the
ten months of this fiscal year and shipments of woven or ‘cut and sew’ garments’ decreased by 1.38 per cent to $4.83 billion.
A senior official of the EPB pointed out that as garment shipments had been experiencing negative growth from the beginning of this fiscal year, the country’s overall exports suffered in the following months.

‘Now export growth is improving as mainly garment exports are on rise again,’ he added.
The BGMEA’s president, Abdus Salam Murshedy, said that the garment industry, due to the belated impact of the global recession and gas and power shortage, started experiencing negative and seesaw growth in export shipments since May last year.
He pointed out that the increase in orders that the local exporters had received by the end of last year resulted increased shipments in the past couple of months or so.
‘There is still a seesaw in the trend of orders as our competitors in other countries are enticing buyers with more attractive offers,’ said Murshedy.
The EPB’s report showed that with 70 per cent annual growth which achieved 66 per cent more than the target, export of jute goods earned $377 million in the 10 months of the current fiscal year.

Raw jute shipments amounted to $170 million in the period against $118 million of the same period in the last fiscal year.
Export of petroleum by-products — naphtha and furnace oil — rose by 104 per cent to $235 million while export of terry towels increased by 24 per cent to $136 million.

Export of frozen foods decreased by 14 per cent to $333 million and of home textile products by 11 per cent to $234 million.
Leather exports grew by 16 per cent to $175 million, footwear by 4 per cent to $162 million, bi-cycles by 38 per cent to $94 million, agro-processed foods by 23 per cent to $46 million and pharmaceuticals by 13 per cent to $35 million.
The volume of export increased by 2.5 per cent in the period but the value of exported products fell by 1.5 per cent.
The volume of manufactured products, which constitute more than 90 per cent of Bangladesh’s exports, increased by 2.3 per cent but the prices fell by 6.3 per cent.

-The New Age.