Bangladesh’s footwear exports to the United States increased by 64.40% to $451.40 million last year, against $274.58 million in 2021 as US buyers were relocating their sourcing from China and Vietnam.
Local exporters hoped that the US would be the bigger market than the European Union for Bangladeshi footwear in the coming days thanks to the diversion of export orders from China.
They also said that US buyers were going for country-of-origin diversification and Bangladesh, India, Indonesia and Cambodia were getting the benefit of increased orders for the footwear.
According to the US Department of Commerce data, Bangladesh’s leather footwear exports in 2022 to the US market also grew by 63.25% to $406.49 million from that of $249 million in the past year.
The total US imports of footwear from the world in 2022 increased by 32.51% to $33.43 billion compared with that of $25.23 billion in 2021, the data showed.
The import of footwear by the US from China in 2022 grew by 23% to $12.15 billion from $9.88 billion in 2021.
Footwear imports by the US from Vietnam in 2022 increased by 41.19% to $10.48 billion from $7.42 billion in the past year.
India’s footwear exports to the US market grew by 64.19% to $745.03 million in 2022, the data showed.
Footwear exports by Indonesia to the US in 2022 rose by 53.04% to $3 billion from $1.96 billion in the previous year.
The US footwear import from Cambodia in 2022 grew by 47.68% to $1 billion from $678.18 million in 2021, the US data showed.
According to the Export Promotion Bureau, Bangladesh’s export earnings from footwear in 2022 increased 25.63% to $1.28 billion from $1.02 billion in 2021.
Of the $1.28 billion, $795.53 million came from shipping leather footwear.
The EPB data showed that Bangladesh’s footwear exports to the European Union in 2022 stood at $540.33 million.
Source: Tribune
