Bangladeshi entrepreneurs are to hold a three-day knitwear show in New York in November, eyeing 1 billion US dollars of annual knitwear export to the United States from the next fiscal year.

The fair, slated to begin on Nov. 14, is expected to draw around 5,000 buyers, The Daily Star reported on Friday.

Bangladesh Knitwear Manufacturers and Exporters Association ( BKMEA) President Fazlul Haque said it is not so difficult to raise knitwear export to the United States to 1 billion dollars a year.

"If we can maintain our existing export trends to the US market, we can achieve the target within one year," he said.

"Although we are exporting less than 3 percent of the total demand of the US market worth 16 billion dollars, we have a lot of chances to explore this market. The fair will encourage local knitwear entrepreneurs to do more business with the US business people," Haque said.

Although the United States is the biggest market for knitwear products, the market once was almost unexplored as knitwear exporters showed less interest in the US market due to quota hassles, he said.

Haque said in the post-MFA (Multi-fiber Agreement) era, knitwear export to the United States surged notably. In fiscal 2004-05 (July 2004-June 2005), Bangladesh exported knitwear products worth 402.68 million dollars to the US market, marking around 70 percent increase over the previous year.

"Our knitwear exports to the US market is increasing day by day and so is our production as in every two and a half days a knitwear plant is set up in Bangladesh."

Source: Xinhua