Growing Bangladesh exports hold lessons for India

India can take some "lessons" from Bangladesh and focus on specialising in products in which it is competitive, according to The Economic Survey 2021 suggested that.

The survey said on Friday that Bangladesh, a strong exporting nation, seems poised to emerge as a dominant exporter as its outbound shipments posted an impressive compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 8.6 per cent during 2011-2019, compared to 0.9 per cent for India and 0.4 per cent for the world, The Economic Times reported.

Bangladesh's share in world exports has increased from 0.1 per cent in 2011 to 0.3 per cent in 2019.

The top five export commodities (from labour intensive sectors such as textiles, apparels and footwear) account for more than 90 per cent of the total exports of Bangladesh since 2015, it said.

In case of India, on the other hand, export performance is more broad-based as the top five export commodities jointly constitute around 40 per cent of total exports and these goods are capital and technology-intensive, it added.

According to trade experts, Bangladesh being a least developed country (LDC) enjoys duty concession in several global markets.

These concessions help LDCs in registering healthy growth rates in exports as compared to India in most of the developed economies, Federation of Indian Export Organisations (FIEO) Director General Ajay Sahai said.

The total trade between the two countries decreased to USD 9.46 billion in 2019-20 from USD 10.25 billion in 2018-29.