Bangladesh's shipbuilding industry is set to emerge as a new export leader after two shipbuilders said on Monday they have already bagged orders worth more than 250 million of dollars last year. Meghnaghat-based Ananda Shipyards said it had signed deals worth about $180 million, while Chittagong-based Western Marine took its total orders to more than $70 million. Ananda Shipbuilders President Abdullahel Bari said: “If we can capture 1% of the global order for small ships, the amount will be worth $4 billion. The global market for small ships now stands at around $400 billion. dollars,” said Shakhawat Hossain. CEO of Western Marine. Their comments follow what experts called a momentous year for the country's shipbuilding industry, which previously languished in building smaller launches and tankers for local operators. Experts said the country has become a new destination for companies looking to build small ocean-going vessels as traditionally shipbuilding nations such as South Korea and China now focus on building large vessels. Even Vietnam, which is relatively new to shipbuilding, is no longer interested in building small ships weighing up to 25,000 tons deadweight tons. “They want to build bigger ships because it is relatively cheaper and requires fewer people,” Hossain said, adding that their reluctance has made India and Indonesia the new destinations for small shipbuilding. Attention to Bangladesh came in April last year when Ananda signed deals worth around $100 million with two German shipping companies to build eight ships with a capacity of 325 containers by June 2010." As far as So, this was the largest export order for the country. The contract sealed our name as a new shipbuilding country on the global map," said Bari, a former professor of naval engineering. The Export Promotion Bureau (EPB) said it did not have data on the size of export orders by individual exporters. The company then signed two more deals worth $82 million in October and December last year. Bari said late this month that his company would sign a deal with another German company to build four ships, each worth $17.5 million. investing around Tk 1.10 billion to set up two dry docks in our shipyard. We hope that early next year, when the docks are built, we will be able to receive orders worth $500 million," Bari said.