THE country’s trade deficit hits $7.14 billion in the first nine months of the current financial 2014-15 compared with $4.55 billion during the same period of the last fiscal, a report in a national daily on Tuesday said and blamed a massive drop in export earnings against higher import bills payment for the gap. The trade gap has increased by 56.78 percent during this period. Making the comparison, the report said export earnings grew by 2.96 percent during the period when payment against imports grew by 12.21 percent. In absolute terms, earnings from exports stood at $22.61 billion with an overall import liability at $29.76 billion. The situation appears worrisome in view of the opposite direction of movement of exports and imports which are widening the trade gap and Bangladesh Bank officials see the unveiling of a troubled external trade matrix that may ultimately bring pressure on our forex reserves. External trade of any country, by and large, is based on export earnings of goods and services to pay for imports. In the case of fund deficits, they resort to external loans. But Bangladesh is currently enjoying a huge surplus in our current trade account and is free from any repayment crisis of import bills. But the recent trade indicators show the country’s export earnings did not rise enough during last nine months and is at $22.61 billion, which is only a small rise from last year’s $21.96 billion target for the nine months period. Particularly, the RMG exports during the period rose by only 3.18 percent to $18.62 billion against a target of $19.55 billion. It shows the big setback the garment sector suffered during the recent political crisis and sensible people believe that it should be a lesson for the political leaders to give uninterrupted space to business. Meanwhile, several trade indicators have raised questions as to why the imports of capital machinery surged during the past nine months when business people took hardly any fresh initiative to expand business or set up new plants through the prolonged political crisis hit by nationwide blockade and hartals. The suspicion also runs high that the imports were indeed fictitious and over-invoicing of import bills to launder money out of the country is the main culprit behind the scene. In fact, the country is losing huge amounts of capital regularly under the guise of fictitious imports as resorted to by influential people close to political establishments. So the trade deficit is only growing up exponentially with export earnings on the decline while imports are rising phenomenally. The huge trade deficit in the service sector increased by 24.04 percent to $3.58 billion in the July-March period and also warrants careful review. It has shot up by $790 million in nine months, which is also not easily understandable. It is advisable that the Bangladesh Bank would enforce stringent monitoring measures on all import documents to protect the economy and plug all illegal transfers of money out of the country under the guise of fake import bills.
