The recently published revised data on the Balance of Payment (BoP) by Bangladesh Bank (BB) is quite revealing, as it reconciled the discrepancy in export income reported by two government organisations: the Export Promotion Bureau (EPB) and the National Board of Revenue (NBR). According to the EPB, exports grew by 3.93 percent during July-April of the fiscal year 2024. However, the central bank has come up with a revised export figure indicating a negative export growth of 6.8 percent during the same period. The reconciled export statistics revealed a discrepancy of $13.8 billion, which means the actual export income was $33.67 billion as opposed to the $47.47 billion shown. In FY2023, the difference of export earnings between the EPB and BB was $12 billion. The reduced export income in the first nine months of FY2024—$13.8 billion—is equivalent to three percent of Bangladesh’s gross domestic product (GDP). According to the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS), the preliminary GDP estimate for FY 2024 is $459 billion.
