Bangladesh's September Exports Rise 8.5% to $3.94 Billion, Even as Buyers Keep Diversifying Away

A Smaller Bounce Than It First Appears

Bangladesh's merchandise exporters earned $3.94 billion in September, the Export Promotion Bureau's data released on October 1 showed, a healthy 8.54 percent increase over the $3.63 billion the country shipped out in September last year. Read in isolation, that is a strong number, and it pushed first-quarter earnings for the new fiscal year to $13.09 billion, up 6.34 percent from the same three months a year ago. Read next to August, though, the picture looks less like a surge and more like a retreat from an unusually strong month. August's exports had come in at $4.43 billion, so September's total was actually about 11 percent lower month on month, even as it topped last September comfortably.

That combination, up sharply from a year ago but down noticeably from the month before, is less contradictory than it sounds once the garment sector's order cycle is taken into account. August and September together form the tail end of the autumn shipping window for Western retailers stocking up ahead of the winter holiday season, and the two months rarely move in a straight line even within a single strong quarter. What matters more for assessing the underlying trend is that September 2026 still beat September 2025 by a wide enough margin to keep the fiscal year's cumulative growth rate solidly positive.

Garments Still Carry Nearly Four-Fifths of the Load

Ready-made garments brought in $3.08 billion in September, about 78 percent of total exports, up 8.56 percent from roughly $2.84 billion in the same month last year. Within that figure, knitwear grew 8.58 percent and woven garments rose 8.54 percent, a rare instance of the industry's two main product lines moving in near lockstep rather than one dragging on the other. Mohammad Hatem, president of the Bangladesh Knitwear Manufacturers and Exporters Association, offered a less flattering explanation for part of the growth than exporters might like: "Higher yarn prices also pushed up the unit price of exported garments, contributing to the rise in overall export earnings." In other words, some of September's dollar growth reflects exporters charging more per unit because their own input costs rose, not purely a larger volume of goods leaving the country.

Hatem also pointed to the sector's energy problems as a drag still working its way out of the system, saying "a strong rebound in apparel exports is expected as the energy supply situation gradually improves," an implicit acknowledgment that gas and electricity shortages at factories have been holding back fuller output. That comment lines up with BD Financial Review's own reporting from September 29, when BGMEA president Mahmud Hasan Khan was telling factory owners a more uncomfortable story alongside the headline growth figures, that international buyers are strategically spreading their orders across more supplier countries rather than concentrating purchases in Bangladesh. Thirty factories closed between January and September even as fifty three new ones opened, a churn BGMEA is answering with a new Japan desk, an October trade roadshow in Hong Kong and a push for extended trade preferences. September's solid headline number does not erase that underlying competitive pressure.

Sector	September 2026	Year-on-Year Growth
Ready-made garments (total)	$3.08 billion	+8.56%
Pharmaceuticals	-	+64.33%
Jute and jute goods	-	+22.72%
Leather and leather products	-	+20.19%
Home textiles	-	+13.52%
Light engineering products	-	+3.76%

The Smaller Sectors Growing Faster Than Garments

Outside the garment sector, which dominates the headline total by sheer size, several smaller export categories grew far faster in percentage terms. Pharmaceuticals led the pack with 64.33 percent year-on-year growth, by far the strongest performance of any category the Export Promotion Bureau tracked for the month, though pharmaceutical exports still represent a small fraction of Bangladesh's total shipments compared with garments. Leather and leather products grew 20.19 percent and home textiles rose 13.52 percent, both continuing a longer pattern of diversification that trade officials have been encouraging for years as a hedge against Bangladesh's heavy dependence on a single industry.

Jute and jute goods grew 22.72 percent in September, a figure worth reading alongside BD Financial Review's September 30 coverage of India's new countervailing duties on Bangladeshi jute exports. India's Directorate General of Trade Remedies recommended duties of up to $140.04 per tonne on top of separate anti-dumping duties of up to $445 per tonne the two countries were already disputing, a stacking that Bangladeshi industry figures argue breaches World Trade Organization rules. September's strong jute growth captures trade that largely predates or sits outside the newly announced duties, which gives the sector's current momentum a shelf life that depends heavily on how that trade dispute resolves in the coming months. Jute earnings had already grown 8 percent to $884 million in the fiscal year just ended after falling from $1.16 billion in FY21, so the sector was recovering from a low base even before the latest Indian trade action threatened to interrupt that recovery.

What a Slower Month Still Confirms

Light engineering products grew a comparatively modest 3.76 percent, the slowest pace among the categories the Export Promotion Bureau highlighted, a reminder that diversification efforts are proceeding unevenly across sectors rather than lifting every non-garment category at a similar pace. None of the smaller sectors, even pharmaceuticals at its startling 64 percent growth rate, comes close to matching garments in absolute dollar terms, which is why Bangladesh's overall export trajectory still rises and falls largely on what happens in RMG factories regardless of how well jute, leather or pharmaceuticals perform individually.

Put together, September's numbers describe an export sector that is still growing on a year-on-year basis, still overwhelmingly dependent on garments, and still facing the twin pressures Hatem and Khan have both pointed to this autumn, rising input costs squeezing margins even as revenue grows, and international buyers quietly diversifying their sourcing even as this month's Bangladesh orders came in strong. The first-quarter growth rate of 6.34 percent gives policymakers a reasonably solid base heading into the back half of the calendar year, but the month-on-month dip from August and the structural warnings from industry leaders both suggest that base is less secure than the headline year-on-year figure alone would suggest.