Apparel imports of Middle East at $3 bn in H1, China claims 31% share

Apparel imports of Middle East stood at $3.108 billion during January-June 2022. Amongst all the exporting nations, China ranked first on the suppliers’ list with a share of 31.43 per cent ($977.016 million), followed by Bangladesh, Turkiye, Italy and India. Asia-Pacific region supplied about two third of the total apparel imported by the Middle East.

The supply from the top five countries to the region surged in the first six months of this year over the same period of last year. The imports from China grew by 31.89 per cent in January-June 2022 on a yearly basis, compared to the mild growth of 0.88 per cent in January-June 2021, according to Fibre2Fashion’s market insight tool TexPro.

Middle East’s apparel imports from Bangladesh rose to 62.76 per cent in the first half of this year from 0.46 per cent during the same period of last year. The share of Bangladesh in the total imports by Middle East in the first half of this year was 11.55 per cent. The share of Turkiye, Italy and India stood at 9.36 per cent, 6.46 per cent and 5.66 per cent, respectively. Morocco, Vietnam, Georgia, Spain, and Cambodia take the next 5 spots on the list of top 10 apparel supplier countries to Middle East, as per TexPro.

Asia-Pacific was the largest sourcing region for the Middle East with imports amounting to $1.928 billion or 62.04 per cent of the total imports. The Middle East’s apparel imports from all over the world stood at $2.959 billion in the second half of 2021, $2.269 billion in the first half of 2021, $2.416 billion in the second half of 2020 and $1.904 billion in the first half of 2020.