Analysis of Agri-Food Trade Structures
To Promote Agri-Food Trade Networks
In the Islamic Countries
61
Table 14: Share of Top 10 Agricultural Products in Total Agricultural Export: 2005-2015, Percent
Products
2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2015
Agricultural Products
100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100
Crustaceans (live or
dead), chilled or frozen 50.4 57.7 51.1 49.9 42.5 40.6 39.6 29.1 40.6 39.5
Jute and other textile
based fibers 17.2 16.8 16.3 17.5 21.5 25.7 23.3 26.5 13.4 12.3
Vegetables, fresh, chilled
or frozen 8.8 5.2 4.7 5.2 5.3 4.9 6.2 6.5 10.0 7.0
Fish, fresh (live or dead),
chilled or frozen 6.2 5.5 4.1 9.8 8.7 8.2 10.0 6.3 5.6 4.6
Tobacco and tobacco
manufactures 3.6 2.2 2.0 3.5 6.4 6.7 6.1 6.0 4.3 4.9
Fruit and nuts (not
including oil nuts) 5.2 5.2 1.8 2.0 2.1 2.6 3.9 5.2 4.4 2.7
Fruit and vegetable
juices 0.3 0.6 0.4 0.8 1.2 0.9 1.2 1.8 3.7 5.5
Spices
0.6 0.4 0.2 1.0 0.9 0.8 1.0 2.5 1.5 2.4
Bread, pastry, cakes,
biscuits and other
bakers' wares 0.3 0.4 0.4 0.5 1.0 0.8 0.7 1.4 1.4 3.5
Edible products and
preparations 0.5 0.2 0.4 1.3 0.3 0.5 0.8 0.9 1.5 3.3
Total share of top 10
products 93.1 94.4 81.4 91.5 89.8 92.0 92.7 86.2 86.3 85.8
Rest of Agricultural
export products 6.9 5.6 18.6 8.5 10.2 8.0 7.3 13.8 13.7 14.2
Source: UN Comtrade retrieved through WITS.
The fisheries and aquaculture sector in Bangladesh played a significant role in the country’s
economic growth over the last four decades. The sector’s contribution to GDP, export earnings,
and providing a livelihood to millions of Bangladeshis are well known. The sector’s importance
can be seen from the fact that its contribution to GDP currently is around 3.65%. Bangladesh is
one of the world’s leading fish producing countries with a total production of 4.134 million MT,
where aquaculture production contributes more than 56% of the total production. Over the last
10 years, the average growth performance of this sector was around 6%.21
This growth performance of the fisheries sector however has not been reflected in its export
performance. Although around 50% of the export earnings of Bangladesh’s agricultural sector
still accounts for exports of fish products, this export group is showing a decline over the last
decade. Crustaceans (live or dead), chilled or frozen product group alone accounted for 50% of
country’s total agricultural export earnings in 2005 which was however gradually reduced to
around 40% in 2015. Between 2005 and 2015, more than 80% of total exports of fish items
consisted of chilled and frozen prawn and shrimp, and the picture has been almost similar in
recent years. In 2015, annual exports of fish were around 447 million USD, among which almost
400million USD came fromshrimp and prawn exports. Other fish (live or dead), chilled or frozen
21 Bangladesh Economic Review 2016, Ministry of Finance, Government of Bangladesh, available at:
accessed on 1
April 2018]