Export of Indian cotton to Bangladesh likely to be affected

06-Aug-2024 01:10 PM

Mumbai. Due to the ongoing political crisis and unrest in Bangladesh, all types of transportation from India have been stopped.

Air and rail services have been shut down. There is no movement of vehicles across the border and neither are the ports functioning smoothly.

As a result, the export of cotton along with other products from India to Bangladesh has also come to a halt.

Cotton worth $2.4 billion has been exported from India to Bangladesh. Bangladesh is emerging as an important textile center of the world.

According to the data of the Ministry of Commerce, the share of Bangladesh's imports in the total export of cotton from India was 16.8 percent in the financial year 2012-13,

which doubled to 34.9 percent by the financial year 2023-24. During the financial year 2023-24, cotton accounted for about one-fourth of the total exports from India to Bangladesh.

During the financial year 2023-24, Bangladesh remained the biggest buyer of Indian cotton, where almost twice the amount of cotton was exported as compared to China. It is worth noting that China itself was the second largest importer of Indian cotton.

Cotton is also exported from India to many other countries, but Bangladesh is considered the most reliable market.

Actually, there is a system of export from India to Bangladesh through all three means - road, rail and sea route. Being the closest eastern neighbor, it is cheaper to import goods from India to Bangladesh.

The situation there is not good right now, so for some time Indian exporters would not like to send any goods there. It remains to be seen how long it takes for the situation to become normal.