Bangladesh's total services export income in the fiscal year of July 2019-June 2020 dipped by 5.56 percent to over 6 billion U.S. dollars, according to the official data released Monday.
According to the figures reported by the Export Promotion Bureau (EPB) under the Ministry of Commerce, Bangladesh earned a total of 6,131.89 million U.S. dollars from services exports in the last fiscal year, compared to 6,492.68 million U.S. dollars in the same period a year earlier.
The country exported transportation services worth of 573.93 million U.S. dollars in the last fiscal against 663.10 million U.S. dollars in the previous fiscal year.
Among other major sectors of services export, telecommunication and information services performed poorly in the last fiscal when the sector witnessed 14.87 percent drop year on year to 474.24 million U.S. dollars, the EPB data showed.
Bangladesh set its services export target in 2019-2020 fiscal year at 8.50 billion U.S. dollars.
The country's total services export income in the 2018-19 (July 2018-June 2019) fiscal year surged 46.06 percent year-on-year to 6.34 billion U.S. dollars.
The slump in Bangladesh's service exports in the last fiscal year has been attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Bangladesh reported about 3,000 new COVID-19 cases and 37 new deaths on Monday making the total tally nearly at 280,000 and total deaths at 3,694, the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) said.