Prime minister Sheikh Hasina on Sunday asked the exporters to explore new markets for Bangladeshi goods and expand the country’s export basket.

‘We’ll have to search for new places. We’ll have to expand the export basket,’ she said while addressing the National Export Trophy Award Ceremony at the city’s Osmani Memorial Auditorium.

In the function, the PM conferred 77 exporters with the National Export Trophy in 28 categories for their outstanding performance in the country’s export earnings for the 2021-2022 fiscal year.

Among them, 28 firms were recognised with gold trophies, while 27 with silver trophies and 21 with bronze trophies and the rest one firm with the Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Export Trophy.

Rifat Garments Ltd was given the highest recognition, the Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Export Trophy for highest export earnings in the 2021-22 fiscal.

The prime minister said a country shouldn’t rely on only one export item as the demand of a particular item won’t always be the same.

‘Why will we be dependent only on the garment item?’ she said.

She expressed her conviction to take the country forward economically by boosting production, export earnings and purchasing power of the country’s people.

‘We don’t want to be dependent on limited goods,’ said Hasina.

The PM said she had already given a directive to the country’s diplomats to pay due attention not only to political diplomacy but also to economic diplomacy. It is essential to know which goods have demands in a particular country, she added.

She said Bangladesh has a scope to enhance exports to Middle Eastern countries, GCC countries, Africa, South Asia and Southeast Asia, East Asian countries and East European countries.

She said Bangladesh can diversify exports as much as it’ll be able to enhance communication with the countries.

‘We’ll have to avail this opportunity. We’ve already started working on it. I would like to tell you to pay more attention to these countries,’ she said pointing at the exporters.

Citing that the purchasing power of the people in many existing export markets of Bangladesh goods went down due to high inflation and high poverty rate, she said this is why Bangladesh will have to explore new export markets and diversify the export items.

The PM also stressed the need for changing the fashion design in line with time-befitting demands.

She said the government will carry out research activities to explore new export markets of Bangladeshi items.

‘We’ll do it on our part. But the businessmen will have to find their partners as well here,’ she added.

The PM put emphasis on the export of environment-friendly jute goods, handicraft items, processed foods, processed agricultural goods, frozen fishes,man-made fiber and digital devices.

Focusing on the country’s economic progress in the last 15 years, Hasina said her government raised the size of the national budget to Tk 797,000 crore in 2024-2025 from Tk 68,000 crore in 2008-2009 fiscal year.

Besides, her government has increased the Annual Development Programme by 13 times, the export earnings by five times and the remittance by over six times in the time.

About the socio-economic upliftment, she said her government brought down the poverty and extreme poverty rates to 18.7 per cent and 5.6 per cent now respectively from 41.5 per cent and 25.1 per cent.

‘Now our economy has elevated to the 33rd largest economy in the world. We’ve been able to make our economy strong enough,’ she said.

State minister for commerce Ahasanul Islam Titu presided over the function, while chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Commerce Ministry Tipu Munshi, commerce secretary Md Selim Uddin, FBCCI president Mahbubul Alam and Export Promotion Bureau  vice-chairman Anwar Hossain, spoke on the occasion.

Besides, director of Rifat Garments Ltd Sajid Azad and deputy managing director of Picard Bangladesh Amrita Makin Islam expressed their feelings about receiving Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Export Trophy and the gold trophy in leather and leather goods export category respectively.