Bangladesh Chases New Buyers in South America After Exports Top $195 Million in a Quarter

Bangladesh's garment makers have spent decades chasing buyers in the United States and Europe. Now the Export Promotion Bureau is pushing harder into a market most exporters have barely touched: South America. Shipments to 11 South American markets reached $195.17 million in the first quarter of this fiscal year, July to September 2026, and the agency says that number is still small enough that there is real room to grow it.

• Bangladesh exported $195.17 million worth of goods to 11 South American markets in Q1 FY27.
• Brazil and Chile alone accounted for $122.69 million, nearly 63 percent of the total.
• Apparel, woven and knitted combined, made up about 79 percent of everything shipped to the region.
• The EPB is betting on trade fairs like Home Show Brazil to pull in non-garment exporters too.

Where the money is actually coming from

The country breakdown makes clear this is still a two-market story wearing an eleven-market label. Brazil led with $70.82 million, followed by Chile at $51.87 million, Peru at $24.24 million, Colombia at $18.05 million, Uruguay at $11.63 million and Argentina at $10.28 million. The remaining five markets together added up to roughly $8.3 million, a reminder that Bangladesh's South American push is really concentrated in a handful of economies with established trade links, not yet a broad-based diversification.

Brazil's dominance is not new. The country has been Bangladesh's biggest buyer in Latin America for years, and separate trade data shows Bangladesh's exports to Brazil alone rose 26 percent in FY2024-25, to $187 million, up from $147 million the year before and just $109.2 million two years before that. The South American quarter-one number released this week suggests that climb has kept going, with Brazil now on pace for roughly $280 million a year if the current quarterly rate holds, though a single quarter is not a reliable guide to the full year given how seasonal garment orders can be.

Garments dominate, but that is the point of concern

Woven apparel and accessories brought in about $84.53 million and knitted or crocheted garments another $70.10 million, together roughly 79 percent of everything Bangladesh sold into the region this quarter. Pharmaceuticals added $6.58 million and footwear $5.71 million, with jute goods, leather items, bamboo and clay products and Nakshi Kantha textiles making up smaller slices still.

EPB Vice Chairman and Chief Executive Mohammad Hasan Arif has been explicit that this concentration is exactly what the bureau wants to fix. He said the bureau is working to diversify Bangladesh's export basket and push into emerging markets through more strategic trade fair participation, warning that heavy reliance on readymade garments and a handful of destinations leaves the country's export earnings exposed to shocks it cannot control, whether that is a shift in buyer preference, a shipping disruption, or a downturn in any one of its two or three biggest markets.

"Heavy reliance on readymade garments and a few destinations exposes earnings to external shocks," Arif said, urging exporters to study demand, consumer preferences, pricing and competition before exhibiting abroad.

The trade fair strategy behind the numbers

Part of this quarter's push traces back to Home Show Brazil 2026, held August 11 to 13 in São Paulo's Distrito Anhembi exhibition grounds. The EPB funded Bangladeshi participation, and the Bangladesh Embassy in Brasília managed logistics on the ground. Four companies, Jihan Plastic Industries, Mother Tannery, Rainbow Jute and Classical Handmade Products, exhibited across five booths, showing jute goods, leather items, bamboo and clay products and Nakshi Kantha embroidery to a market that has mostly known Bangladesh for cheap, mass-produced clothing.

The event included business-to-business meetings and a seminar on home and lifestyle product exports. The EPB has not released deal values from the fair, so it is too early to say how much of this quarter's $195 million the event itself generated versus ongoing garment orders that would have shipped regardless. Arif's advice to exhibitors, research local demand and pricing, build national pavilion branding, and engage directly with buyers, reads as much like guidance for the next trade fair as a summary of this one.

What it means for you

For a Bangladeshi manufacturer or small exporter outside the garment sector, jute, leather, bamboo, handicrafts, pharmaceuticals, this report is a signal that government-backed trade fair support exists and that South America is being actively promoted as a destination with less competition than saturated markets in the US or EU. For anyone running an export business and managing currency exposure on dollar invoices from new markets, it may be worth checking the currency converter when quoting prices in reais or pesos against the taka. For the broader economy, the more interesting number is not the $195 million itself but the 79 percent garment share sitting inside it, a reminder that even Bangladesh's newest export frontiers are, for now, still largely about the same industry that built the old ones.