After registering a steep fall of 21 per cent year-on-year to $4.423 billion last year, textile and garment exports from Sri Lanka are likely to cross $5-billion mark in 2021, as the island nation has already earned $3.893 billion until September, growing at 18.5 per cent year-on-year, according to the statistics released by the Central Bank of Sri Lanka. According to a report by Fibre2Fashion, Exports of garments were up 21.4 per cent year-on-year to $3.544 billion during the first three quarters of this year, while textile exports increased by 40.3 per cent and fetched $254.8 million, the central bank said in its report ‘External Sector Performance – September 2021’. Exports of other made-up textile articles fetched $94.2 million, registering a huge decline of 49.2 per cent year-on-year. Textiles and garments exports accounted for 56.43 per cent of all industrial exports from Sri Lanka during the nine-month period, the report showed. Imports of textiles and textile articles too rose by 32.4 per cent to $2.206 billion, while clothing and accessories imports were up marginally by 2.4 per cent to $156.8 million during January-September 2021. In September 2021, Sri Lanka’s earnings from textiles and garment exports increased 5.7 per cent to $458.5 million, compared to exports of $433.7 million in the same month of 2020. Expenditure on textiles and textile articles shot up by 25.8 per cent year-on-year to $262.2 million, while clothing and accessories imports were up 17.4 per cent to $18.1 million. In 2020, Sri Lanka's clothing exports fetched $3.939 billion, a fall of 24.3 per cent over $5.205 billion in 2019. On the other hand, imports of textiles and textile articles decreased by 19.7 per cent to $2.335 billion. Source: Fibre2Fashion