Current account deficit shrinks to $1b in July-Sept

Bangladesh's current account deficit has shrunk to less than 1.0 billion US dollars from July to September, the latest official data showed recently.

According to the Bangladesh Bank (BB) data, the current account balance showed a deficit of 892 million dollars in the first three months of the current fiscal year 2023-24 against the deficit of 3,678 million dollars in the same period of the previous fiscal year.

Remittances, however, helped Bangladesh by cushioning the impact of the current account deficit with export income growth.

According to the BB official, the inflow of remittances from some 10 million Bangladeshis living and working in over 100 countries and regions in the first three months of 2023-24 amounted to 5.67 billion dollars.

The latest BB data showed the South Asian country's import payment from July 2022 to September 2023 was 19.35 billion dollars, up 11.70 percent, while earnings from exports stood at 13.69 billion dollars, up 9.51 percent, during the same period.

At the end of the last 2022-23 fiscal year, the country's current account deficit amounted to 3.33 billion US dollars, meaning Bangladesh's economy absorbed more than what it produced in the months, the BB data showed.