DHAKA, March 23 (Xinhuanet) -- Bangladesh's growth in T-shirt export to the United State has been widely outpaced by major Asiancompetitors in January over the previous year, signaling the startof a major shift of market just in a month after quota expiry.

    In January 2005, export of Bangladesh's T-shirts to the US market increased by only 14 percent, while Cambodian exports rose by 206 percent, Qatar 331 percent and India 122 percent, The New Age reported Wednesday.

    Bangladeshi exporters are falling far behind in price war with its major competitors in Asia.

    Tobarak Hossain, secretary of the Bangladesh Knitwear Manufacturers and Exporters Association, however, said that the experience of the very first month after phase-out of multi-fibre arrangement is not enough to draw a conclusion about the future trend of export.

    Knit manufactures concentrated on EU market so far and the US market is somewhat new for them, he said, adding that so it will take some more days to have the real picture.

    Bangladeshi exporters sent 39,961 dozens of T-shirts to the US market in January 2005 against 35,180 dozens in January 2004.

    T-shirt is one of the major export items from Bangladesh.

    T-shirt shares more than 60 percent of the knit wear exports that earned 2.1 billion US dollars last fiscal out of around 6 billion dollars export revenues from the apparel sector.

    The US market consumes around 20 percent of the total knit wearexports after EU, which as a region is the largest buyer of Bangladesh's apparels. Enditem