Garment shipments from Bangladesh continue to fetch less than half the price commanded by Vietnamese exporters on the EU market.
Industry experts attribute this gap to Dhaka’s continued reliance on cheaper, lower-value clothing lines rather than premium apparel categories.
Fresh customs data places Bangladesh as the second-cheapest supplier to European buyers among the leading apparel-exporting nations, a group that includes China, Vietnam, India and Cambodia.
Eurostat figures show the average price of Bangladeshi garment exports slipping to €13.80 per kilogramme in the first half of 2026, down from €15.07 in 2025, a year-on-year drop of 8.47%.
Vietnam moved in the opposite direction. Its average per-kilogramme price climbed to €29 across the first half of the current year, up from €25.95 over the same six months in 2025.
China, meanwhile, recorded a milder softening, with export prices easing by 2.18% across the same window, Eurostat figures show.
Mohammad Hatem, who heads the Bangladesh Knitwear Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BKMEA), pointed to the composition of each country’s export basket as the underlying driver.
Vietnamese exporters, he noted, have moved decisively into higher-value garment categories, whereas Bangladeshi manufacturers remain concentrated at the cheaper end of the market.
Cheaper garments carry low unit prices but move in far greater volumes, he explained, whereas premium items fetch stronger prices while shifting in comparatively modest quantities.
To illustrate the gap, he cited a basic t-shirt: one leaving Bangladesh might fetch around $2, while a Vietnamese-made equivalent could command upwards of $4.
Hatem further pointed to damaging price undercutting among domestic exporters themselves, arguing that this internal rivalry has handed international retailers and brand buyers additional leverage to push prices lower still.
Cambodia offers a contrasting trajectory. Its average price advanced by 7.86% to reach €18.67, allowing the SE Asian country to expand its market footprint even as it charged more per unit, a pattern running directly counter to Bangladesh’s experience.
Turkey likewise posted a price increase, rising 1.53% to €28.31 from €27.88 previously.
India and Pakistan both saw export prices decline. India’s average slipped by 1.76%, while Pakistan suffered the steepest fall of any major supplier, dropping 14.74% year-on-year to €10.77 per kilogramme.
Across the EU market as a whole, the average garment import price for the first half of the year stood at €19.84 per kilogramme, a decline of 1.93% from €20.23 during the same period a year earlier, according to Eurostat.
The broader European apparel import market contracted noticeably over the period. Total import value fell by 5.10% to €54.38 billion, while import volumes dropped 3.23% to 2,688.66 million kilogrammes.
“The blended average unit price across all supplying nations eased by 1.93 % to €19.84 per kilogramme,” The Daily Star reported.
Bangladesh’s own performance lagged the wider market downturn considerably. Export value fell 13.65% to €10.37 billion, while volume dropped 5.66% to 751.91 million kilogrammes across the January-to-July period.
Rather than simply mirroring the market-wide contraction, Bangladesh’s steeper decline meant the country actually ceded market share to rival suppliers.
Image courtesy: Freepik
