Bangladesh wants the United States to grant duty-free facilities for US cotton coming into Bangladesh.

The US is a major cotton producer. Now the country wants the US to grant duty-free trade facilities for the import of cotton for use in Bangladesh’s readymade garment factories.

Bangladesh is the second largest exporter of readymade garments in the world. Bangladesh needs nine million bales of cotton to export garments to the world market. Out of this, only 1,50,000 belts of cotton are produced in the country and the production is about 1.6 per cent of the total demand.

So Bangladesh has to import the remaining huge amounts of cotton though the country is making efforts to increase cotton production. For now if Bangladesh wants to export readymade garments worth $100 billion in the next two years, a huge amount of cotton will be required.

In marketing year 2021-22 Bangladesh's domestic raw cotton consumption was estimated at 8.8 million bales. The textile industry is composed of yarn, fabric, and dyeing-printing-finishing mills and they have about 15 million bales of cotton consumption capacity. Raw cotton is the second most imported product in Bangladesh. The country imports raw cotton primarily from India, the United States, Benin, Brazil and Spain.