New Avenues for Export Diversification: A Product Level Analysis of Some Selected Exporting Industries

Export Diversification is a crucial point as Bangladesh received highest positive export growth in the fiscal year 2010-11 and the positive export income growth is still continuing. Whenever there is talk about diversification it may mean diversification of product or destination in the export orientation of the export basket of a country. For Bangladesh the need for diversification is an acute factor as the GDP of the country leans heavily on the country’s export sector which in turn leans on the RMG sector. Major concentration on the sector does not mean that there are no other industries that contribute to the export earnings as well. Though there is a close call in the prioritized sectors in terms of the contribution to export earnings, this study focuses on six prominent industries to decipher the diversification situation/ possibilities and aims at policy recommendation based on two types of analysis. The approaches of these analyses are unconventional in the sense that these methods have not been used before for this kind of analyses.