HM Murtuza | New Age May 17,2020
The country’s overall import payments dropped by 61.61 per cent, or $3.13 billion, year-on-year in April this year amid a countrywide shutdown imposed by the government to contain the spread of coronavirus pandemic.
The settlement of letters of credit, an indicator of the country’s import expenses, decreased to $1.9 billion in April against $5.08 billion in April last year, according to the Bangladesh Bank data released on Sunday.
Import payments also dropped by 52.57 per cent or $2.22 billion in April compared with that of $4.17 billion in March this year.
After the detection of the first coronavirus-infected individual in the country in March 8 this year, Bangladesh has gone into a shutdown since March 26 this year. The holidays have been extended till May 30 in phases.
The country’s economy like the economies of other countries across the globe has been going through a stagnant situation amid the pandemic.
Local businesses said that the plunge in expenditure for imports including that of industrial inputs signalled that the exports would also face the same consequence in the coming months as was observed in April.
In April this year, the country’s export earnings dropped by 83 per cent to $520.01 million from $3.03 billion in the same month of 2019.
The LC opening figures showed that import expenditure would fall further in the coming months . LC opening dropped by 69.58 per cent in April this year compared with that in the same period of the last year.
The cancellation of orders by global buyers of Bangladeshi garment products was mainly responsible for the slump in import expenditure, said a senior official of a private bank.
