Export earnings from US market in the January-October period of 2015 grew by 11.40 per cent to $4.84 billion compared with that of $4.34 billion in the same period a year ago, according to the data released by the Office of Textiles and Apparels under the US commerce department. The country’s readymade garment export earnings from the United States in the 10 months increased by 11.14 per cent to $4.66 billion from $4.19 billion in the same period of the previous year. Exporters said despite not having duty facilities on the US market, earnings from readymade garment export increased in both volume and value as the US economy started to recover. ‘The existing growth on the US market is good but challenge for sustainability remains as our competitive countries like Vietnam will get advantage on the market under the Trans Pacific Partnership agreement,’ former president of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association Anwar-Ul-Alam Chowdhury Parvez told New Age on Saturday. Bangladesh is the third largest apparel exporting country to the US after China and Vietnam. Apparel export earnings of Vietnam from US in the first 10 months of 2015 grew by 13.86 per cent to $9.03 billion from $7.93.billion in the same period of the year 2014, the data showed. Apparel exports of China to the US market in January-July period of this year grew by 2.37 per cent to $26.23 billion from $25.62 billion in the same period of last year. Parvez said that the export growth of Vietnam to the US market would increase more after the implementation of the TPP. ‘China has already shifted huge investment and large volume of investment is in the pipeline to Vietnam to take the benefit of the treaty,’ he said. According to Parvez, some of the renowned global retailers started to give additional importance to Vietnam and shifted a good number of manpower from Bangladesh offices to Vietnam. ‘I think the export volume of Bangladesh will not be decreased but growth might be decreased after the implementation of TPP,’ he observed. He said that the sector people were not worried because there were huge potential in Russia, South Africa and Brazil for the Bangladesh’s apparel sector. Parvez urged the government to take initiative to get duty-free market access to the Commonwealth of Independent States saying that the CIS apparel market size is more than $75 billion. According to the US data, neighbouring India’s apparel exports to the US market in the January-October period of this year grew by 7.52 per cent to $3.16 billion from $2.94 billion in the same period of last year.
