PM directs correction of export data

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina yesterday instructed the commerce ministry to correct the mismatch in export data in reports prepared by the Export Promotion Bureau (EPB) and the National Board of Revenue (NBR).

Both the NBR and EPB were asked to sit in meeting soon to correct the export data and make it uniform, she said in reply to a journalist's query during a press conference regarding her visit to China at the Gonobhaban in Dhaka.

The discrepancy in export data came to the spotlight after the Bangladesh Bank (BB) published figures of the balance of payment for July-April period of fiscal 2023-24, saying that actual exports in the first 10 months of the fiscal year were nearly $14 billion below the value earlier published by the EPB.

The EPB said exports stood at $47.47 billion in July-April of fiscal 2023-24.

The BB, however, said actual shipments amounted to $33.67 billion, representing a 6.8 percent year-on-year fall in exports as opposed to the EPB's claim of export growth.

Similarly, the BB detected inflated export data by the EPB in the July-May period of 2023-24.

Last week, the central bank said Bangladesh's exports declined 4.28 percent year-on-year to $40.72 billion in that period, which stood in contrast to the 2 percent growth in shipments reported by the EPB on June 5.

The BB's latest figures showed that exports in the first 11 months of FY24 were $10.82 billion, or 21 percent, lower than the figure released by the EPB.

The BB found six types of statistical wrongdoing for the inflated export data-- ranging from serial duplication errors to miscalculations of the value of fabrics to repeated miscounts of sample items as exports.

The PM said the mismatch happened as the NBR calculates how much revenue it could generate while the commerce ministry, which oversees the EPB, counts the value of exports.

Hasina added that she discussed the data mismatch with State Minister for Commerce Ahasanul Islam Titu at the award-giving ceremony of the national export trophy at the Osmani Memorial Hall in Dhaka.