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Published on August 17, 2016
It stood at $6.27 billion dollar, down from $6.96 billion in 2014-15. Economist Zaid Bakht attributes the decline to a fall in cost of imports.
He said the fall in global food and oil prices have led to near-static import costs, which led to the fall in trade deficit.
“Meanwhile the export earnings also experienced a substantial hike, which also contributed to low trade deficit,” said Bakht, the research director of Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS).
Between July 2015 and June 2016, the cost of Bangladesh’s imports was $39.71 billion, up by 5.45 percent over the previous year.
Export earnings rose by 9 percent at $33.44 billion. Trade deficit is calculated from the difference between export and import, which is now at $6.27 billion.
Six years ago, during FY 2009-10 the trade deficit was at $5.15 billion. It skyrocketed to $9.93 billion the next year, the highest in Bangladesh’s history.
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