Although the US remains Bangladesh’s largest export earnings market till now, the earnings growth from this top destination is on a downtrend.While earnings from the US, the top export market for Bangladesh, is declining, earnings from second largest export earning country Germany is increasing every month.According to the Export Promotion Bureau (EPB) data, during July-April of the current fiscal, the export earnings from the US market fell by 6.65 percent to US$ 4.79 billion from US$ 5.06 billion during the corresponding period of FY 2015-16. Meantime, export earnings from Germany have increased to US$ 4.63 billion than the previous year’s US$4.04 billion during the ten months of the current fiscal.Exporters attributed the competitiveness with countries like India, Vietnam, Cambodia, not having duty-free facilities and lack of government policy support are the main reasons for decreasing trend of export earnings from this top destination.“Lagging behind the competitive countries, the USA election, increased cost of production mostly pushing hard to the US market resulting in the decline of the export earnings”, Salam Murshedy, president of Export Association of Bangladesh (EAB), told daily sun.Giving the example of Vietnam, he said this country got $11 billion export earnings only from this country while Bangladesh’s share is declining.“If Bangladesh does not follow the international policy for the export earning sector, it may bring more impact on the earnings”, said Murshedy.The EAB president further said only the European market is not enough to lead the export growth to double digit while it is needed to pay attention the world market.Bangladesh earned $6.22 billion exporting products in USA market in 2015-16 fiscal while export earnings from Germany were $4.98 billion in 2015-16 FY.According to the EPD data, it shows that the Germany has become the largest RMG export earning destination exceeding USA market. The largest RMG earning sector earned US$4.34 billion during the July-April period while it was US$4.25 billion from the USA market.Mahmud Hasan Khan, vice-president of BGMEA said that Bangladesh is facing a number of challenges in export markets, especially in the US and UK markets. Duty-free facilities in the US market are putting much impact on export.Besides, delay in the shipment due to the poor lead time of backward linkage is also resulting in slow-down of export from US market.In July-April of FY 2016-17, Bangladesh earned $28.72 billion, which is 3.92 percent higher to $27.63 billion compared with previous corresponding period.
