Bangladesh's central bank has reported a huge surge in the value of import letters of credit (L/Cs) settled in the four months to October 2010 compared with the same period in the previous year.

Food imports played the largest part in stimulating the surge, while imports of other consumer goods also contributed to the increase in L/C business.

Increases

Bangladesh Bank says that L/Cs against imports worth US$9.551 billion were settled between July and October 2010.

This compares with import L/Cs valued at US$6.858 billion settled in the same period of 2009, according to the central bank's statistics.

Import trends

One of the main reasons for the increase was been an upward trend in food grain imports. In the four months to October 2010, the value of food grains imported into Bangladesh increased by 96.73 per cent compared with July-October 2009.

Comparing the same periods, imports of other consumer goods increased by 34.49 per cent.

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