Bangladesh's overall trade deficit in the first eight months of the current 2010-11 fiscal year (July 2010- June 2011) widened to 4.86 billion U.S. dollars, official statistics showed Sunday.

Statistics of the Bangladesh Bank (BB) showed that the country exported 14.11 billion U.S. dollars of goods while it imported items worth 18.97 billion U.S. dollars in the July-February period.

The overall trade deficit in the same period of the previous 2009-10 fiscal year (July 2009-June 2010) was 3.315 billion U.S. dollars when Bangladesh's export earning and import payment stood at 10.049 billion and 13.364 billion U.S. dollars, respectively, the BB data showed.

In the first eight months of the current fiscal year, it showed, Bangladesh's export and import earnings surged 40.42 percent and 41.92 percent respectively compared with the same period a year earlier.

Bangladesh's trade deficit in the last fiscal year 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.