Trade deficit drops slightly in July-Feb

NEWS DESK

Country’s merchandise trade deficit with the rest of the world declined slightly in the first eight months (July-February) of the current fiscal year (FY20).

The latest statistics on balance of payments (BoP), released by Bangladesh Bank recently, showed that merchandise trade gap stood at US$10.77 billion in July-February of FY20.

The trade deficit figure was $10.93 billion in the same period of the past fiscal year (FY19), showed the statistics.

Decline in both export earnings and import payments reduced the trade gap, which is not linked to the outbreak of Covid-19.

Export and import declined by 4.85 per cent and 3.87 per cent respectively in the first eight months of the current fiscal year in terms of free-on-board (fob) value.

Gap in services trade, however, increased significantly during the period under review.

Services trade deficit stood at $2.58 billion in July-February of the current fiscal year, which was $2.06 billion in the same period of FY19.