Sri Lanka’s merchandise exports fell 1 percent year-on-year to US$1,269.49 million in August 2026, with apparel, tea and coconut products all contracting, EconomyNext reported from Export Development Board data.
The figures fill in the sector detail behind the headline totals published two days earlier, when exports passed US$12 billion for the first eight months.
What fell
- Apparel and textiles — down 8.4 percent to US$464.27 million, still by far the largest single category
- Tea — down 7.76 percent to US$130.92 million
- Coconut-based products — down 17.28 percent to US$104.27 million
- Diamonds, gems and jewellery — down 25.05 percent to US$30.53 million, the steepest fall of any sector named
Where it fell
The United States remains the largest destination, taking US$263.24 million in August, down 13.43 percent year-on-year. India, the second-largest, went the other way: up 32.80 percent to US$107.26 million.
Exports to the United Kingdom fell 7.65 percent to US$76.08 million — a decline recorded despite Sri Lanka’s preferential access under the UK’s Developing Countries Trading Scheme, which grants duty-free entry on about 92 percent of product lines.
One caution on the US figure: EconomyNext reports the decline in apparel shipments to the United States and the decline in total exports to the United States as the same 13.43 percent. The two are unlikely to coincide to the decimal, and the report does not distinguish them further.
The services side, and a genuine structural shift
Services exports rose 13.97 percent to US$331.87 million, EconomyNext reported separately. But that headline growth rests almost entirely on one line:
- Transport and logistics — up 51.41 percent to US$187.50 million
- ICT/BPM — down 10.49 percent to US$135.10 million
- Construction — down 36.91 percent to US$7.62 million
- Financial services — down 62.16 percent to US$1.65 million, on a very small base
Transport and logistics is now larger than ICT/BPM, which had long been treated as the country’s flagship services export. On these figures it accounts for more than half of all services earnings in the month, and without its gain the services total would have fallen rather than risen.
Two figures in the source that do not hold up
Readers comparing this month’s coverage should be aware of two errors in the published reports.
First, the goods report describes the January–August total of US$12.01 billion as “total merchandise export earnings”. It is not: US$12.01 billion is goods and services combined. Merchandise alone was US$9.41 billion (up 3.63 percent) and services US$2.60 billion (up 6.59 percent) over the eight months — and those two sum exactly to US$12.01 billion, up 4.26 percent on the US$11.52 billion earned a year earlier.
Second, the services report gives combined August exports of goods and services as “1,601.36 billion US dollars”. The correct unit is million: US$1,269.49 million plus US$331.87 million is US$1,601.36 million, or US$1.60 billion, up 1.77 percent year-on-year.
The board’s response
EDB chairman Mangala Wijesinghe framed the month around diversification rather than the decline.
“Our focus must remain on strengthening the competitiveness of our existing export sectors while accelerating the development of new products, services and markets,” he said.
“Greater value addition, innovation, technology adoption, market diversification and deeper integration into global value chains will be critical to sustaining export growth and creating greater value for the national economy.”
The board has targeted US$19 billion for the full year. As set out in our earlier report, that now requires about US$1.75 billion a month across the remaining four months, against the US$1.60 billion August delivered.
Not reported
Neither report gives figures for rubber, seafood, spices or electronics, breaks the apparel decline down by destination beyond the United States, or explains what drove the 51 percent jump in transport and logistics. No outlet other than EconomyNext had published the August sector breakdown at the time of writing.
