Bangladesh lags in value-added apparel exports: Report

Bangladesh’s apparel export basket remains heavily skewed toward basic items, leaving the country well behind global trends in higher-value, advanced garment categories, according to an analysis of Export Promotion Bureau (EPB) and International Trade Centre (ITC) data.

Bangladesh exported US$38.825 billion in apparel during calendar year 2025, capturing a share of the $426 billion global market. 

However, basic garments – comprising bottomwear, T-shirts, sweaters, innerwear, baby clothes, and small accessories – accounted for 76.94% of the country’s total apparel exports, compared to 61.58% worldwide.

The concentration is particularly pronounced in high-volume basics: bottomwear alone made up 33.68% of Bangladesh’s apparel exports (versus 21.68% globally), while T-shirts accounted for 18.64% (versus 10.09% worldwide).

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Among basic items, the widest structural gap was in small accessories, which accounted for only 0.35% of Bangladesh’s apparel exports compared with 7.52% globally.

In semi-basic categories, particularly shirts and blouses, Bangladesh had a 10.33% share of its export basket, higher than the corresponding 7.38% share in global apparel trade.

However, advanced categories – including outerwear, dresses, technical wear, sportswear and suits – accounted for just 9.35% of Bangladesh’s apparel exports, compared with 30.46% globally.One of the sharpest contrasts was in outerwear. The category accounted for 13.45% of global apparel trade, making it the world’s largest garment category, but represented only 3.83% of Bangladesh’s apparel exports.

The analysis also highlighted a data reconciliation issue, noting that 3.38%, or $1.313 billion, of Bangladesh’s apparel export total could not be matched with any HS6 product line because of a known gap between EPB’s two-digit and six-digit totals. The discrepancy compares with a 0.59% rounding gap in the global data.

Overall, the data show that Bangladesh remains heavily concentrated in basic garment categories while its export presence is comparatively low across all advanced categories, in some cases by a wide margin.

The analysis, compiled by Bangladesh Apparel Voice (BAV) using EPB and ITC Trade Map data, suggested that future growth in the country’s garment sector could increasingly depend on expanding into higher-value advanced garment categories rather than relying primarily on basic products.