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Bangladesh's export earnings from services have been on a decline over the last three years after a pickup even in the post-pandemic fiscal year, officials say, largely for ignoring a vast potential.
Notwithstanding an impressive income in the fiscal year (FY) 2021-22, just after the pandemic Covid-19 attack, the highest job-absorbing sector failed to see a liftoff in its foreign income, they said Friday.
Over the last three years between FY2023 and FY2025, the export earnings from the services sector were far lower than that in the post-Covid year FY2022.
Bangladesh earned US$8.89 billion by exporting different services in FY2022 to overseas markets but its income remained on a downturn in the following three years, official statistics showed.
According to the Export Promotion Bureau (EPB), the earnings from the export of services were $7.50 billion in the subsequent FY2023 which declined further to $6.64 billion in FY2024.
In the last fiscal year (FY2025), although the earnings curved up a little bit to $6.91 billion, the receipt was still nearly $2.0-billion lower than the FY2022 figure.
The EPB statistics show that the foreign-exchange earnings from services rose by only 3.96 per cent to $6.91 billion in FY2025 from $6.64 billion in the previous year.
Experts say the government is usually busy with some merchandise exports, especially apparel, leather, pharmaceutical, light-engineering and agricultural products, but neglects taking prompt actions for boosting the services exports on an expanding worldwide market.
The country's services sector has the potential for the earning of handsome foreign exchange as the IT, tourism, travel, construction, computer and software, and financial services are the next promising items, they point out.
Computer services (software), data processing and hosting, telecommunications, sea and air transports, education and tourism, technical and trade-related services, and construction services are the key services that earned higher amounts of foreign exchange for Bangladesh.
Among the key sectors, foreign-exchange earnings from education and tourism were worth $505 million in FY2025, while $750 million came from construction services, $628.50 million from computer services (Software, data processing, and consultancy etc), $550 million from computer-data processing and hosting services (IT-enabled services).
Besides, technical, trade-related and other business services fetched $980 million while $630 million came from sea transport, $400 million from air transport, and $250 million from financial services, save insurance, in the last FY, the EPB data showed.
Economist Dr Masrur Reaz notes that the governments over the last three decades had been busy boosting only the readymade garments while the services sector was almost out of sight.
"When the countries like India, China and the Philippines are grabbing the global market of services, Bangladesh is still depending on the single product--RMG. It has no better export policy on services," Dr Masrur, Chairman and CEO of the Policy Exchange, Bangladesh, told The Financial Express.
"Although the government is working on a new export policy where services sector will get preference, but it may be on paper. Our previous experience is showing us that," he added.
The demand for services, especially in the field of digital economy, is expanding rapidly on a global scale where Bangladesh has potential to grab a portion of the pie, Dr Masrur notes.