The growth in Bangladesh’s readymade garment exports to the United States continued decreasing in nine months (January-September) of 2019 as global consumption of RMG products dropped amid economic woes and some of the competing countries grabbed more market share, experts and exporters said. Bangladesh’s RMG exports to the US in January-September of this year grew by 9.96 per cent while the export growth to the market was 14.49 per cent in the first half (January-June) and 16.12 per cent in the first quarter (January-March), according to the data released by the Office of Textiles and Apparel (OTEXA) under the US Department of Commerce on Saturday. The data showed that Vietnam’s export growth to the US in the first nine months of this year remained steady while Cambodia and Turkey witnessed a sharp increase in the growth in the period. Bangladesh’s earnings from RMG exports to the US in January-September of this year grew to $4.56 billion from $4.15 billion in the same period of last year. ‘Still we have some growth in the US market but some of our competing countries are growing fast in the market that means we are getting very little and our competing countries are getting more benefits from order shifting from China due to the US-China trade war,’ Centre for Policy Dialogue distinguished fellow Mustafizur Rahman said. Despite having the impact of global showdown, Vietnam and Turkey are doing good in the US market in exporting apparel products, he said. Although the US import of apparel products from China remained still high, the import in the first nine months of 2019 posted a 1.10-per cent negative growth with $20.10 billion against $20.32 billion in the same period in last year. Vietnam’s RMG export to the US in January-September of 2019 grew by 12.70 per cent to $10.35 billion from $9.19 billion in the same period of 2018. Among the competing countries, Vietnam registered the highest growth in apparel export to the US in the first nine months of this year, the OTEXA data showed. Earlier, Bangladesh achieved 14.49 per cent growth in RMG export to the US in January-June and it was the highest growth among the competing countries. Apparel exports of Cambodia to the US in first nine months in 2019 grew by 11.13 per cent to $2.02 billion from $1.82 billion in the same period of last year. Cambodia’s RMG export growth to the US was 8.30 per cent in the January-June period and 5.96 was in the first quarter of this year. The US apparel import from India in January-September of 2019 grew by 8.37 per cent to $323 billion from $2.98 billion in the same period of 2018. Apparel export of Turkey to the US in January-September in 2019 grew by 9.17 per cent to $470.11 million from $430.62 million in the same period of last year. Turkey’s export to the US continued to increase in the nine months of this year and the export growth was 6.09 per cent in the first half of the year and it was 5.61 per cent in the first quarter, the data showed.
