Bangladesh's food grain imports fall sharply

Bangladesh's food grain import during July-April period of the outgoing 2011-12 fiscal year ending this month declined sharply by additional than 50 % year-on- year, said a central bank official of Sunday.

Quoting Bangladesh Bank (BB) data, the official who preferred to be unnamed said Bangladesh's rice import plunged 56.32 % year-on-year to 283.8 million U.S. dollars during the first 10 months of the current fiscal year 2011-12 (July 2011-June 2012).

During July-April period, he said the country's wheat import dropped by 52.46 % to 433.2 million U.S. dollars.

Officials say such a large fall in import of rice and wheat was mainly because of good harvest of the staple food items in the country.

Against the backdrop of bumper domestic production, Bangladesh has slashed its food grains import target by over 29 % to 1. 2 million tons in the fiscal year 2011-12 from the original target of 1.7 million tons.

An official of Bangladesh's Ministry of Food and Disaster Management said the decision had been made following bumper domestic production of rice in 2011 and satisfactory internal stock levels of the staple food items in the country.

The rice import target for the current fiscal year 2011-12 has been slashed by 43 % to 450,000 tons while the wheat import plan has been reduced by 17 % to 750,000 tons, said the official in condition of anonymity.

According to the official, the Bangladeshi government during the last fiscal year 2010-11 (July 2010-June 2011) imported 2.2 million tons of rice and wheat to feed over 150 million people of the South Asian country which reportedly ranks fourth in per-capita rice consumption in the world.