Bangladesh's imports surge 11.36 pct in five months

Bangladesh's imports surged 11.36 percent year on year to over 16 billion U.S. dollars in the first five months of the 2014-15 fiscal year (July 2014-June 2015), the central bank data showed Monday.

According to statistics of the Bangladesh Bank (BB), the settlement of letters of credit (LCs), generally known as actual imports, stood at 16,200.84 million U.S. dollars in July-November, compared to 14,548.43 million U.S. dollars in the year-earlier period.

In July-November, the BB data showed, Bangladesh's overall import orders increased by 14.77 percent year on year.

The overall import orders, officially known as fresh opening of import LCs, increased to 17,738.33 million U.S. dollars in July- November, up from 15,455.46 million U.S. dollars in the same period of the last fiscal year.

Bangladesh's import orders used to grow by around 20 percent to 40 percent.

They saw a slower growth as economic activities felt the pinch of intensified political unrest due to a series of hartals and other political and non-political acts of violence that has led the economy to remain in a fragile state.

Bangladesh's import payment was 36,571 billion U.S. dollars in the last fiscal year, up 8.92 percent. Endi