DHAKA, April 10 (Xinhua) -- Bangladesh's imports surged 13.39 percent to nearly 33.84 billion U.S. dollars in the first eight months of the current 2017-18 fiscal year ending in June, a central bank official said Tuesday.
An official from the Bangladesh Bank (BB) said the settlement of letters of credit (LCs), generally known as actual imports, stood at 33,841.96 million dollars in July-February compared to 29,845.60 million dollars in the same period a year earlier.
Import orders, officially known as fresh opening of import LCs, also increased by 60.71 percent in the first eight months of the current fiscal year (July 2017-June 2018), he said, quoting provisional BB data.
The overall import orders increased to 50,203.93 million dollars in July-February against 31,239.35 million dollars in the same period of the last fiscal year, the BB data showed.
Bangladesh's actual imports surged about 9 percent to 43.49 billion dollars in the last 2016-17 fiscal year (July 2016-June 2017) when China, India, Singapore, Japan and Indonesia were top five import partners of the country.
Bangladesh imports from China reached 10.19 billion dollars in the last fiscal year from 9.64 billion dollars in the previous 2015-16 fiscal year.
Therefore, China's share in Bangladesh's total imports in the last fiscal year stood at 25.2 percent, the BB data showed.
It showed the country's imports from India stood at 6.15 billion U.S. dollars in 2017-18 fiscal year from 5.45 billion dollars in 2015-16 fiscal year.
Also in the last fiscal year, Bangladesh Imports from its third largest import source Singapore reached 2.45 billion dollars followed by fourth trading partner Japan from where products worth 1.74 billion dollars were imported, showed the BB data.
South Korea, which ranked Bangladesh's fifth import partner in the last fiscal year, exported goods worth 1.28 billion dollars to Bangladesh.