Md. Mohiuddin Rubel, Director, BGMEA
The official source of trade statistics of the Eurostat published the apparel import data of the European Union for January-June, 2022. As per the statistics, EU’s import from Bangladesh witnessed the highest growth among all the top countries. During this period, EU’s apparel import from Bangladesh increased by 44.60% compared to the same period of previous year, whereas their global import grew by 25.03%. EU’s import from Bangladesh reached 11.31 billion dollars.
China, being the top apparel import source for EU, registered 21.78% year-over-year growth. EU imported 12.22 billion dollars worth apparel from China during the mentioned time.
Turkey being the 3rd largest apparel source of EU also posted 20.38% year-over-year growth. EU imported 10.89 billion dollars worth of clothing from Turkey.
Other top countries having high growth were Cambodia 40.15%, Pakistan 32.28%, Indonesia 28.64%, and India 24.90%.
The surge in EU’s import is caused mainly by recovery from the pandemic and increased shopping by consumers resulted in retail sales growth. However, the upward trend might not sustain in the following months of 2022 due to inflation at historic level, especially the price hike of fuel and food, and the downturn in economic growth than projections indicating recession. Unusual long summer may also affect winter clothing range.
However, we observed that Bangladesh’s total export maintained significant growth until August 2022, which means EU’s imports from Bangladesh might keep on positive trend till September, and may falter afterwards as retail sales is already affected by economic turmoil and buyers being cautious about overstock and current production.
