Bangladesh overtakes Turkey in exports of knitwear

05 Apr '11

2 min read

Outshining Turkey in terms of export volumes, Bangladesh stood to be the second biggest exporter of knitwear items across the globe, last year.

As against Turkey's exports of 7.74 billion pieces, Bangladesh exported 7.78 billion pieces of knitwear items like sweaters, T-shirts, etc in 2010.

After surpassing Turkey, Bangladesh is now the second biggest producer and exporter of knitwear in terms of volume, next to China.

However, value-wise Turkey still leads Bangladesh, as the value of the knitted garments exported by the Turkey during last year came to $6.92 billion, which is higher than Bangladesh's exports worth $6.19 billion.

Bangladesh's clothing exports have continued to grow at a striking rate of 40 percent during the current financial year, and if this continues, the country is likely to outshine Turkey even in terms of value by next financial year.

Knitwear producers in Turkey engage themselves in production of high-value added items like sportswear to cater to fashion retailers in western countries, while the Bangladeshi producers mainly engage themselves in production of low-priced items like T-shirts.

Whereas, Bangladeshi producers explored knitwear business only in 1990s, Turkey has been a leading garment producer since the time of Second World War. However, due to high cost of labour, the Turkish producers do not accept low-cost orders.

Further, in spite of the fact that the competitive advantages that China enjoyed over other countries are steadily getting eroded, it still continues to be the world's biggest producer of knitwear and woven garment, contributing around 50 percent of the world's apparel market worth $500 billion.

Fibre2fashion News Desk - India

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