Bangladesh's imports drop over 24pc in July-October

Bangladesh's imports dropped 24.07 per cent year-on-year to nearly 22 billion US dollars in the first four months of the 2023-24 fiscal year (July 2023-June 2024), showed the latest central bank data.

According to statistics of the Bangladesh Bank (BB), the settlement of letters of credit (LCs), generally known as actual imports, stood at 21,974.48 million dollars in July-October compared to 28,940.16 million dollars in the same period a year earlier.

In the July-October period, the BB data showed, Bangladesh's overall import orders also declined by 11.52 per cent year-on-year, reports Xinhua.

The overall import orders, officially known as fresh opening of import letters of credit, decreased to 21,819.12 million dollars in July-October against 24,659.55 million dollars in the same period of the last fiscal year, it showed.

The latest BB data showed that the South Asian country's import payment was 69.50 billion dollars, down 15.76 per cent, from July 2022 to June 2023.

Bangladesh's trade deficit in the last 2022-23 fiscal year dipped by 48.41 per cent year-on-year to 17.16 billion dollars amid shrinking forex reserves-depressed imports.

In its bid to boost Bangladesh's shrinking forex reserves, which dropped to less than 20 billion dollars last week, the bank has taken various measures to discourage imports.