Limited export markets to affect 2020 Bangladesh receipts: WTO

Image collected
Bangladesh’s export revenue will be severely affected in 2020 as the united states depended on limited destinations and those counties have been badly damaged by the coronavirus pandemic, according to a recent record of the World Trade Organisation.

Bangladesh’s merchandise exports were concentrated on five markets, including the United Claims, Germany, the uk, France and Spain, and every one of the top five market segments had been severely afflicted by COVID-19, the report said.

Data showed that 15.1 % of Bangladesh’s total exports go to Germany, 13.8 per cent to the united states, 8.1 % to the united kingdom, 7 % to Spain and 6.8 % to France.

Other least established countries are also exposed to this vulnerability of relying on limited export destinations, it said.

The report projected that textile and clothing product exporters whatsoever developing countries were more likely to experience a significant fall in export revenues in 2020.

‘The pandemic threatens to derail hard-won advancement gains in LDCs,’ the report said.

Declining demands and source disruptions had weighed drastically in the LDC exports, especially exports of textiles and clothing products, it said.

Citing the fall in Bangladesh’s export earnings simply by 83 % in April this year, the report explained that Bangladesh and Cambodia had been hit by buy cancellations worth a variety of billion dollars because of the pandemic.

‘Moreover, some retailers in the export destinations have started to seek bankruptcy relief protection, causing significant problems to suppliers found in LDCs, as existing agreements risk getting cancelled,’ it said.

The WTO report said that agriculture and horticulture exports from the LDCs were also staying drastically affected as Ethiopia, the next largest flower exporter in Africa, lost 80 per cent of the mainly European demand because of its cut flowers.

The report also said that among the COVID-19 pandemic’s far-reaching consequences for the global economy, the LDCs would face the most challenging challenges because of their dependency on a limited selection of products exported to a few markets.

‘The year 2020 started against the setting of a subdued trade performance in 2019. The worthiness of LDC exports of merchandise and companies declined by 1.6 per cent in 2019, a larger decline than that of world exports (1.2 per cent),’ the report showed.

Therefore, the share of the LDCs in world exports also registered a marginal decline, falling to 0.91 % found in 2019 and the expected downturn in trade found in 2020 is likely to be even more extreme for the LDCs than at the global level, it observed.

According to the article, the ongoing pandemic could possibly affect the nearterm prospects for a few countries to graduate right from the LDC status when Bangladesh, which is on the path to graduation in the next couple of years, had been going through unavoidable declines in economic growth and export earnings.

‘Dependency on a few export markets and small products are generally vulnerable for the country but we could not diversify our export marketplaces and products for many years. Nowadays we have to hold back until our major markets rebound,’ Policy Study Institute of Bangladesh executive director Ahsan H Mansur informed MODERN on Saturday.

He said that Bangladesh’s export earnings progress would depend on how the major markets rebound post COVID-19 and the way the nation coped with the changed problem.

‘Even following the rebound of our traditional market segments, I think Bangladesh will not be able to tap the entire potential of the post-COVID situation because of lack of durable items,’ Mansur said.

Tags :

Share this news on:

Previous Story

Trending Topics

Archive