The country’s deficit in trade in goods with the rest of the world crossed US$33 billion in the last fiscal year (FY22), according to the central bank’s updated statistics released on Monday.
It showed that the merchandise trade deficit stood at $33.25 billion in the last fiscal year (FY22) which was $23.78 billion in the previous fiscal year (FY21).
Bangladesh Bank on Monday released the provisional estimate of the annual balance of payments (BoPs) which also showed that the big jump in imports of goods had widened the trade gap creating big pressure on the foreign exchange reserve as well as exchange rates.
Imports of goods, on the basis of free on board (f.o.b.) valuation, stood at $82.49 billion in the last fiscal year against $60.68 billion in FY21.
Thus, imports recorded around 36 per cent growth in FY22.
At the same time, earnings from exports of goods (on f.o.b. basis) registered 33.45 per cent growth and reached at $49.24 billion in FY22. The amount was $36.90 billion in FY21.
The deficit in trade in services also increased in the last fiscal year and stood at $3.87 billion.
Receipts from services exports recorded $9.98 billion against the services imports worth $13.85 billion in FY22.
Big deficits in external trade in goods and services coupled with negative growth in annual inward remittance enhanced the current account deficit to $18.70 billion in the last fiscal year, four times jump from the deficit of $4.57 billion in FY21.
Meanwhile, the foreign exchange reserves in Bangladesh slipped below $40 billion after the Bangladesh Bank cleared the import payments to the Asian Clearing Union (ACU) last month.
The country settled import payments worth $1.99 billion with the ACU last week, plummeting the reserves to $39.80 billion on July 12 for the first time in nearly two years. The reserves stood at $46.15 billion in December last year.
The ACU is an arrangement through which participating countries settle import payments for intra-regional transactions.
Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Iran, the Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka are members of the Tehran-headquartered ACU. The central banks of the countries have to make the payments every two months.
The reserves have been under-stressed in recent months as exports and remittance flow failed to keep pace with blistering import bills.
