DHAKA: Bangladesh is working towards a goal of $3 billion in bilateral trade with Turkey by 2020 by diversifying its trade items, a senior official has told Today’s Zaman.
“Bangladesh and Turkey have been maintaining the best of relations for a long time now,” Bangladeshi Consul General in İstanbul F. M. Borhan Uddin said during a media briefing held on Friday afternoon.
Bangladesh glossed its resume and offered promising trade relations with Turkey, with a particular interest in boosting exports in glass fiber to Turkey. The ship building sector is also an emerging one that has huge growth rates — around 300 percent or more — according to Borhan Uddin. According to figures provided by the Bangladeshi official, bilateral trade between the two countries jumped particularly between 2012 and 2014.
In 2013, exports from Bangladesh to Turkey were worth $637.81 million and Bangladesh received Turkish goods worth $223.41 million. The following year there was an increase to $856.20 million worth of exports from Bangladesh to Turkey, but a decrease in imports from Turkey to $183.54 million.
Bangladesh is looking to diversify the sale of its industrial products, yet the country’s exports are still dominated by garments, which make up an enormous 80 percent of its overseas sales. The country’s second-largest export is pharmaceuticals.
