Top Exporting Products During Pandemic

Bangladesh’s handicrafts not only promise increasing foreign currency earnings through exports but also women empowerment. Last fiscal year over $20 million-worth products were exported, propelled by a workforce including around four lakh women, half of whom are based in their own homes, working for exporters throughout the country. The photos were taken in Bogura’s Sherpur upazila recently. Photo: Internet

While nearly every business sector in Bangladesh has been hit by the fallouts of the coronavirus pandemic, handicrafts have continued faring well in the global market.

With exports beginning in 1980, such products which are made entirely by hand or by using only simple tools have come to create an international market of more than $20 million, as per the Export Promotion Bureau's (EPB) estimate of fiscal 2019-20.

This fiscal year, manufacturers and exporters have already attained half that figure in just four months to October, bagging $10.84 million from foreign countries. In comparison, it was $7.34 million in the same period last fiscal.

Handicrafts export has been annually increasing by $2 million to $4 million for the past five years, as per the EPB.

In the international market, the demand for Bangladeshi handicraft products has been growing day by day, even during the pandemic, said Golam Ahsan, president of the Bangladesh Handicrafts Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BANGLACRAFT).

When the coronavirus hit Bangladesh in March, all factories throughout the country had to shut before
opening two months later.

"During that time, around Tk 200 crore worth work orders from foreign buyers were cancelled. We had become hopeless because we have over 400 handicrafts companies and some 92 per cent of them are exporters," said Ahsan, owner of Sun Trade.

"But the global market for Bangladeshi handicrafts has become normal now, and we are getting orders online."

Bangladesh mainly exports rugs, bags, buckets, home furniture, textiles and decoration items and storage solutions to almost 60 to 70 countries in Europe, Asia, South America and Latin America.

Every year Bangladesh arranged handicrafts exhibitions in Germany, Hong Kong, the US, Italy and France, from where some 50 per cent order of the year's work comes. But this year they were able to arrange only one exhibition in Germany before coronavirus hit the world.

Orders from abroad from July to November 15 had totalled around $20 million, and their hope is that the final amount at the end of the fiscal would cross that of last year

Classical Handmade Products BD, one of the biggest exporters, secured $6 million worth orders this fiscal year.