In the last year, Bangladesh became the seventh largest importer of textiles across the world, according to the World Trade Statistical Review 2021.
Released by the World Trade Organization (WTO) in the last week, the report also showed that Bangladesh’s import of textiles from the other countries stood at US$ 8.81 billion in 2020.
The country was the fifth largest importer of textiles in the previous year when the spending of textile imports recorded at $9.91 billion.
Annual imports of textiles in Bangladesh declined by around 17 per cent in the last year, second highest rate of decline among the top-10 importers of textiles.
European Union remained the top importers of textiles followed by the United States in the last year.
Vietnam became the third leading importer of textiles in 2020 followed by China, Japan and United Kingdom. Canada stood eighth and followed by South Korea and Indonesia.
The textiles include textile yarn, cotton fabrics, woven man-made fibre fabrics etc, according to Standard International Trade Classification (SITC).
According to the WTO statistics, share of Bangladesh in the global textiles import market also declined to 2.46 per cent in the last year which was 3.10 per cent in 2019.
Meanwhile, China remained the top exporter of textiles in the last year followed by EU and India.
“Due to demand for protective personal equipment, world exports of textiles increased the most among manufactured goods in 2020, growing by 16.0 per cent,” said the WTO publication.
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