USDA cuts Bangladesh’s cotton import forecast

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has lowered its projection for Bangladesh’s cotton imports, citing reduced domestic use of the key raw material for the textile industry.

The US agency said imports of cotton by Bangladesh, the world’s second-largest apparel exporter, would be 79 lakh bales in the August-July period of the marketing year (MY) 2025-26, down from its projection of 80 lakh bales forecast last month.

The country will use 80 lakh bales of cotton in MY26, down from the USDA’s previous estimate of 81 lakh bales for the year, according to the agency’s report on world cotton markets and trade published on Monday.

The downward revision comes at a time when Bangladesh has registered a decline in garment exports. The country, which brings more than 80 percent of its annual export earnings through apparel, recorded a 3.73 percent year-on-year drop in shipments to $25.79 billion in the July-February period of the fiscal year (FY) 2025-26.

Of that, knitwear exports fell 4.5 percent to $14.34 billion, while woven garment shipments dropped nearly 3 percent to $12.45 billion during the same period.

Mohiuddin Rubel, additional managing director of Denim Expert Ltd, said several interconnected factors are behind the USDA’s recent downgrade of Bangladesh’s cotton import and consumption projections, primarily originating from sluggish retail demand in key EU and US markets.

“As international export orders slow down, garment manufacturers have reduced their local yarn procurement, leaving domestic spinning mills burdened with an estimated Tk 12,000 crore ($1 billion) in unsold stockpiles,” he said.

Strikingly, this massive inventory buildup persists even as severe natural gas and electricity shortages have already forced textile mills to slash their operating capacities to between 40 and 70 percent, he added.

The USDA revised the global production outlook upward by over 11 lakh bales to 1.21 crore bales, as larger crops in Brazil and China more than offset a smaller crop in Argentina.

It said global consumption is forecast to fall by more than one lakh bales to 1.18 crore bales due to reduced demand in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Mexico, and Vietnam.