Bangladesh' s overall imports weakened in the first three quarters of the 2011-12 fiscal year ( July 2011-June 2012) as the central bank had been maintaining a restrained monetary policy to rein in inflation and contain the ballooning trade deficit, an official said Sunday.

The Bangladesh Bank (BB) official said the country's overall import orders, officially known as fresh opening of import letters of credit, in the first three quarters dropped by 8.35% year on year to over 27 billion U.S. dollars.

"The overall import orders dropped to 27,257.74 million U.S. dollars in July-March against 29,740.75 million U.S. dollars in the same period of the last fiscal year," said the BB official who preferred to be unnamed.

Against the backdrop of various BB measures including those for squeezing imports of non-essential and luxury goods, Bangladesh's overall imports have entered into negative territory, driving actual import growth to dipping motion.

The country's actual imports growth dipped 14.60% year on year to 26.77 billion U.S. dollars in the first three quarters of the 2011-12 fiscal year.

According to the official, Bangladesh's import orders, which usually hover around 20% to 40% growth, started to slide after the central bank had rolled out its monetary policy for the second half of the current fiscal year in January.

The half yearly "contractionary" monetary policy, spanning from January to June 2012, aimed at squeezing money and credit supplies to individuals and businesses in order to curb inflation and better combat external pressures in the wake of financial crisis at home and abroad.

The overall rate of inflation in Bangladesh during April dropped to single digits for the first time in more than one year.

The overall inflation rate, which slowed to 9.93% in April from 10.10% in March, returned to the sliding motion in the last month as both food and non-food items marked fall.

Although inflation returned to sliding motion, the trade deficit continued to widen.

Bangladesh's overall trade deficit in the first eight months of the current 2011-12 fiscal year widened to 5.701 billion U.S. dollars, official statistics showed. The overall trade deficit in the same period of the previous 2010-11 fiscal year (July 2010- June 2011) was 4.859 billion U.S. dollars.

The BB official said squeezing money and credit supplies to individuals and businesses would likely deter the country's economic growth in the current fiscal year.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF), which last month approved nearly 1 billion U.S. dollars loan for Bangladesh, said the country's GDP growth is expected to slow to 5.5% in the current fiscal year.

The Washington-based multilateral lender said macroeconomic pressures have intensified in Bangladesh since late 2010 due to a negative terms-of-trade shock, rising oil and infrastructure- related imports, and accommodative policies.

But Bangladeshi Finance Minster AMA Muhith later said that the South Asian economy's gross domestic product or GDP growth will be stronger in the current fiscal year than predictions of its some key development partners. The Bangladeshi government at the beginning of the current fiscal year put economic growth at 7%.