Exports grow 11% in first 11 months of 2017

„Growth mainly driven by industrial and agricultural exports „Apparel, fisheries exports to EU up due to GSP Plus, lifting of ban „Tea export earnings hit US $ 1.4bn amid higher global prices

The exports continued to record a growth momentum for more than eight months in 2017, compared to 2016, except in three instances, the Export Development Board (EDB) yesterday said.

As per the latest provisional merchandise and export statistics, the EDB said the exports in the first 11 months of 2017 grew 10.82 percent year-on-year (YOY) to US $ 10.4 billion. During the period under review, the export of services recorded a 5.8 percent YOY growth, registering US $ 3.36 billion. The foreign exchange earnings of merchandise and services exports are expected to be US $ 15 billion by end-2017.

“The growth in exports was mainly driven by industrial exports (42 percent) followed by agricultural (18 percent) and fisheries (42 percent), respectively,” the EDB said.the industrial exports contribute almost two-thirds of the total export earnings of the country, while 24 percent is from agricultural products and 2 percent from the fisheries sector.

“Our apparel revenues from January to November last year (2017) have exceeded Sri Lanka’s entire apparel exports for 2016, which was US $ 4.3 billion,” said Rishad Bathiudeen said this week. Therefore, we now expect that the final total apparel exports for entire 2017 would clearly exceed the exports of 2016 and expect it to be in the range of US $ 4.7 billion,” he added. Textile and apparel are almost half of our Sri Lanka’s total annual exports of all products. The country’s largest apparel export market is the US with a 42 percent share, followed by the European Union (EU) with 38 percent.

The two major export destinations for the Lankan apparel showed a positive trend during January-november 2017.

In this period, the total apparel exports to the US was US $ 1.959 billion, slightly up from 2016 January-november figure of US $ 1.94 billion and the exports to the EU were at US $ 1.84 billion, up from US $ 1.80 billion. Sri Lanka regained GSP Plus access to the EU last year.