Bangladesh's trade deficit in the last fiscal year 2009-10 that ended in June ballooned nearly 10 percent year on year to over 5 billion U.S. dollars as import rebounded since April after months of slump in the wake of the global economic recession.

The Bangladesh Bank (BB) data showed the country's import payment stood at 21.39 billion U.S. dollars, up 5.41 percent, in the 2009-10 fiscal year (July 2009-June 2010) while earnings from export totaled 16.24 billion U.S. dollars, 4.2 percent higher, during the same period.

Analysts said Bangladesh's trade deficit, which squeezed since May of the previous 2008-09 fiscal year (July 2008-June 2009), started to widen further from April, the 10th months of the last fiscal year 2009-10.

They said Bangladesh's trade deficit squeezed in context of the global financial meltdown which takes toll on the country's export industries causing lower import of capital machinery and raw materials.

The BB data showed the South Asian country's import slump slowed to 1.47 percent in the third quarter (July-March) of the last 2009-10 fiscal year after falling 5.92 percent in the first half and 19.18 percent in the first quarter.

On the other hand, export slump eased to 0.84 percent in the third quarter after falling 6.82 percent in the first half and 11. 89 percent in the first quarter of the last fiscal year, official data showed.

Trade analysts said imports of capital machinery and raw materials also dropped as fresh investments from both foreign and local organizations in Bangladesh suffered huge setback amid acute power and gas shortages in capital Dhaka as well as many other parts of country.

The country reportedly experiences a shortage of up to 400 million cubic feet of gas each day. Due to lack of new power plants and uninterrupted gas supply to the existing gas-fired power plants, the country has a power supply shortfall of up to 1, 500 MW everyday.

"Narrowing trade gap at this stage is not good for Bangladesh. It's high time for the country to go for huge industrialization. But gas and power shortages are hampering the country's future prospects," a trade analyst said who preferred to be unnamed.

Officials, however, said strong remittances from millions of Bangladeshis, living and working over 100 foreign countries, helped the country offset the impact of the trade shortfall and keep the overall balance of payments in surplus, which reached 2. 89 billion U.S. dollars in the last fiscal year.

Remittance from more than 6 million expatriate Bangladeshis in 2009-10 fiscal year totaled 10.97 billion U.S. dollars, around 13. 20 percent higher than the same period a year ago, the central bank data showed.

With hefty growth in remittances, officials said Bangladesh's foreign exchange reserves rose to a record 10.75 billion U.S. dollars at the end of July, the final month of 2009-10 fiscal year, despite trade gap widened to some extent.

Bangladesh's trade gap in 2008-09 fiscal year was 4.71 billion U.S. dollars against 5.33 billion U.S. dollars in the previous 2007-08 fiscal year (July 2007-June 2008).

The country's trade gap widened to a large extent in 2007-08 fiscal year because of the soaring cost of fuel and food imports following the super cyclone Sidr and two consecutive floods in the second half of 2007.