The country's overall imports grew by over 19 per cent in the first seven months of the current fiscal, boosted by a massive 70.70 per cent increase in import of intermediate goods, the Bangladesh Bank (BB) said Thursday.
"The huge imports of intermediate goods will help the country's overall production in the near future," a senior official of BB told the FE, adding that the import of industrial raw materials also grew by nearly 29 per cent during the period.
Letters of credit (LCs) against imports worth US$ 13.114 billion were settled during the July-January period of the current fiscal (2008-2009) compared with $10.953 billion in the corresponding period of the previous fiscal, according to the central bank statistics.
Import of intermediate goods like coal, hard coke, clinker and scrap vessels sharply rose by 70.70 per cent to $1.295 billion during the period from $758.92 million of the corresponding period of the previous fiscal, the BB data showed.
Industrial raw material import rose 28.95 per cent to $5.429 billion during the period under review from $4.210 billion of the corresponding period of the pervious fiscal.
Import of capital machinery ---industrial equipment used for production --- rose 8.26 per cent to $890.39 million, reflecting a rising level of confidence among the entrepreneurs about the country's future industrial prospects, the BB officials said.
Food import continued to decline as the country built enough stock of rice, the main food item, after record production of Boro and Aman crops in the last calendar year, they added.
During the period, the import of food grains and other consumer goods scaled up by 34.88 per cent and 11.53 per cent respectively, compared to those of the corresponding period of the previous fiscal.
The import of food-grains stood at $529.62 million during the period as against $813.33 million of the corresponding period of last fiscal.
Total production target of food grains has been fixed at 33.914 million tonnes during this fiscal. The actual production of food-grains during fiscal 2007-08 stood at 29.774 million tonnes which was earlier estimated at 33.633 million tonnes.
However, food-grains import stood lower in term of quantity at 1.459 million tonnes during the period compared to 2.683 million tonnes in the corresponding period of the previous year.
Stock of food-grains with the government stood higher at 1.308 million tonnes at the end of January, 2009 compared to 0.697 million tonnes at the end of January last year.
On the other hand, import of petroleum products rose by 12.75 per cent to $1.287 billion during the period against $1.141 billion of the corresponding period of the previous fiscal.
