Dhaka, Bangladesh (BBN)– The central bank of Bangladesh has asked the commercial banks to provide information on imports under miscellaneous or other categories to identify ‘unnecessary’ and ‘luxury’ consumer goods, officials on Tuesday.
The Bangladesh Bank (BB), the country’s central bank, has issued an instruction in this connection recently and asked all the scheduled banks to provide such information by December 10 this year.
“The central bank has taken the move in line with the Council for the Coordination of Fiscal, Monetary and Exchange Rate Policies (Coordination Council)’s decisions,” a BB senior official told BBN in Dhaka, adding that the tariff commission has worked on the same issue to identify unnecessary and luxury consumer items.
Currently, a total of 71 items are being imported under six sub-sectors. A good number of products are also being imported after being categorized under a separate sub-section called ‘others’, the central banker noted.
The central bank of Bangladesh has taken the latest measure to ease the pressure on the country’s overall balance of payments (BoP) through discouraging import of unnecessary and luxury consumer items.
Bangladesh’s current account balance decreased by nearly 51 percent to $307 million in the July-September period of the current fiscal year (FY) from $622 million in the same period of the previous fiscal, according to the central bank statistics.
The overall BoP has also recorded a deficit of $400 million during the period, from the deficit of $426 million in the corresponding period in the previous fiscal.
BBN/SSR/AD-30Nov11-12:26 am(BST)
