Trade

Bangladesh: leather and non-leather footwear exports on the rise in 2024-2025

Jun 20, 2025 Bangladesh

Data from the Export Promotion Bureau reveals that Bangladesh’s footwear sector has shown an upward trend between July 2024 and May 2025, across both the leather and non-leather segments

According to the Export Promotion Bureau of the Government of Bangladesh, exports of other footwear (excluding leather footwear) increased by 30.25% year-on-year to 494.28 million US dollars in the first ten months of the 2024-2025 financial year. In May alone, exports in this category increased by 21.14% year-on-year to reach 48.07 million US dollars.

Exports of leather footwear also rose by 28.96% between July 2024 and May 2025, totalling 620.17 million US dollars, as compared to the same period in the previous financial year. In May alone, exports in this category increased sharply by 54.68% year-on-year, reaching 74.82 million US dollars. This performance contrasts with that of the other leather segments.

On a comparable basis to the first ten months of 2023-2024, exports of leather goods declined by 3.39% to 317.87 million US dollars, while exports of finished leather declined by 7.82% to 119.78 million US dollars. However, it should be noted that leather goods exports grew by 20.78% to 38.30 million US dollars in May, while finished leather exports declined by 3.95% to 12.17 million US dollars.

Overall, the total value of leather exports was 1.06 billion US dollars between July 2024 and May 2025, an increase of 12.55% from 939.9 million US dollars in the same period the previous year. As seen above, this increase was driven primarily by the footwear segment.

Bangladeshi Footwear Industry

In the past decade, Bangladesh has emerged as one of the top 10 global footwear producers with rapidly growing exports, as indicated by the World Footwear 2024 Yearbook (more information available HERE), which highlights the industry’s initiatives in logistics, digitalisation and skill development. However, exports dropped by 25% in 2023, primarily due to decreased American imports.

Image Credits: Hasnan Monir on Unsplash

Bangladesh Exports Footwear International Trade Leather Leather goods