Bangladesh imports surge 10 pct in Q1 of current fiscal year

DHAKA, Nov. 11 (NsNewsWire) — Bangladesh’s imports surged 10 percent year on year to nearly 10 billion U.S. dollars in the first quarter of the 2014-15 fiscal year (July 2014-June 2015), showed the central bank.

According to statistics of the Bangladesh Bank (BB), the settlement of letters of credit (LCs), generally known as actual imports, stood at 9,796.09 million U.S. dollars in July- September, compared to 8,831.80 million U.S. dollars in the year-earlier period, reports Xinhua on Monday.

In July-September, the BB data showed, Bangladesh’s overall import orders increased by 12 percent year on year.

The overall import orders, officially known as fresh opening of import LCs, increased to 10,834.97 million U.S. dollars in July- September, from 9,604.67 million U.S. dollars in the same period of the last fiscal year.

Bangladesh’s import orders used to grow by around 20 percent to 40 percent. They saw a slower growth in the fiscal year 2013-14 ( July 2013-June 2014) as the entire economic activities felt the pinch of intensified political unrest until January this year due to a series of hartals and other political and non-political acts of violence that has led the economy to remain in a fragile state.

Bangladesh’s import payment was 36,571 billion U.S. dollars in the last fiscal year, up 8.92 percent.

(Xinhua)