The home textile of Bangladesh has suddenly lost momentum as its shipment has dropped significantly in the first quarter (Q1) of the current fiscal year, 2023-24, analysts said on Saturday.
Despite a stirring performance in export earnings over the years, the highly potential home textile has lost its way in Q1, plunging 46-per cent forex earnings, find an FE analysis.
Strikingly though, domestic home textile shipment did not fall steeply even during the massive impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on global trade and business.
According to the Export Promotion Bureau (EPB), the domestic hometex industry has made a shipment of $189.50 million during the July-September period in FY24, a 46.43-per cent fall from FY23’s.
In Q1 of FY23, domestic textile producers exported their products to the tune of $353.48 million.
Bangladesh is one of the world’s major exporters of home textile products as its demand is increasing globally.
It is because consumers in the international market are giving importance to changing home décor more frequently and looking for new and innovative products to equip their homes and offices.
Bangladesh regularly exports home textile products such as terry towel, bedspread, pillow cover, cotton table napkin, furnishing fabrics, cushion cover, bath linen and other home furnishings.
According to the FE analysis, hometex has been showing a rousing performance since FY2021 as it entered into the billion-dollar club of the country’s export basket.
The hometex export was $758.91 million in FY20. However, it made a big bounce in the following FY21 with $1.132-billion exports.
Even in FY21, the worst-hit Covid year, hometex shipments showed better performance maintaining its billion-dollar-export earnings until FY2023.
The country’s merchandise export was recorded at $1.62 billion in FY22 and $1.095 billion in FY23.
Meanwhile, export earnings during the July-September quarter of FY21 were recorded at $252.35 million, $279.23 million in FY22 and an impressive $353.48 million in FY23.
But FY24 sees an exception as hometex export has plunged to $189.50 million in Q1, a 46.43-per cent down from that in FY23, according to the EPB data.
Rafiqul Islam, general manager of ACS Textiles (Bangladesh) Ltd, cited high price of yarn, Russia-Ukraine war and Bangladesh’s current ties with the USA and other western countries as the key reasons for this fall in shipments.
The next quarter (October-December) would also be a bad time for the local hometex industry, as the manager of the leading exporter made the forecast to the FE.
A few hundred local producers are making shipments to different destinations across the world.
The major players among them are Zaber and Zuber Fabrics, Saad Musa Group, AllTex Industries Ltd, Classical HomeTex and ACS Textiles.
On the other hand, major importers of Bangladeshi home textile are IKEA, Carrefour, Asda, Littlewood, Maurice Phillips, Wal-Mart and Redcats.
Bangladesh’s competitors in the market are China, India, Pakistan and Vietnam.
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