The drop was largely due to a sharp rise in imports, including food and capital machinery, and soaring global commodity prices, a senior central bank official said.

A further factor was sluggish growth of remittances from Bangladeshis working overseas.

Strong remittances, a key foreign exchange earner for the $90 billion economy, helped offset the trade shortfall and have kept the overall balance of payments in surplus in recent years.

But the balance of payments swung into a deficit in the July-August period and the trade gap widened.