DHAKA, March 27 (Xinhua) -- Bangladesh's overall imports plunged over 22 percent in the first seven months of the current 2018-19 fiscal year (July 2018-June 2019), an official said Wednesday.
The Bangladesh Bank (BB) official who preferred to be unnamed said overall import orders, officially known as fresh opening of import letters of credit (LCs), in July-January period dropped by 22.4 percent year on year to 35.44 billion U. S. dollars.
Quoting the BB data, the official, however, said the settlements of LCs or actual import payments increased by 9.96 percent year on year to 32.6 billion U.S. dollars in the first seven months of the 2018-19 fiscal year.
The BB data showed Bangladesh's actual imports surged 25 percent to 54.46 billion dollars in the last 2017-18 fiscal year (July 2017-June 2018) when China, India, Singapore, Japan and Indonesia were top five import partners of the country.
According to the BB official, the growth in imports which usually hovers around 20-25 percent slumped to a single digit since the end of the last year.
With regard to the slower import growth, he said, since the end of the last year many investors adopted a "wait and watch" approach as Bangladesh went to the country's 11th general election held in December.
