In the first six months of the new fiscal year, Bangladesh’s leather industry registered a total of 475.83 million US dollars’ worth of exporting revenue, which represented a decline of 10.61% over the performance in similar period last year. The leather industry missed the target set for the period by 10.48%.

Finished leather exports generated 65.8 million US dollars, down by 27.34% from similar period in the previous fiscal year, and missing the target set for the period by 18.00%. Leather goods contributed with 125.70 million US dollars, growing by 8.3% from the performance in the first semester of the previous fiscal year, and exceeding the target by 4.23%. Leather footwear exports registered a decline of 12.69%, generating 284.33 million US dollars over the period. Leather footwear is the category contributing the most to the exports revenue of the leather industry: 59.75% share in the first six month of the current financial year.

Revenue generated by exports of other footwear (157.11 million US dollars) increased by 23.52% compared to the first semester in the previous year, being in line with the target set for the category (+0.96%).

Bangladesh’s government has set the leather industry an export target of 1.093 billion US dollars for the current fiscal year. The target set for Other footwear's exports for the entire fiscal year was 320 million US dollars.

According to the 2019 World Footwear Yearbook (AVAILABLE HERE) in 2018 Bangladesh was the 6^th largest footwear producer (461 million pairs). The manufacturing industry in the Asian country is much orientated to the internal market with only 69 million pairs exported in 2018 (making this the 20^th largest exporter of footwear).

Bangladesh’s financial year runs from July to June

Image credits: Daniel von Appen on Unsplash