Which means that some of the worrying about Bangladesh’s trade balance is misplaced. Yes, it’s true, the current account deficit is up, some $754m in the July-January period as opposed to the surplus in the same period last year of $2.47bn. But on trade they are indeed conceptually equal, there’s no difference at all between household trade, regional trade and trade across national boundaries. So, one way of looking at a trade deficit is that we’re getting richer, we’re gaining access to more imports, the very thing we conduct trade for in the first place. What we cannot do is employ foreigners’ money to make us richer and also have a trade surplus.

Source: Dhaka Tribune March 11, 2017 18:35 UTC