Bangladesh's trade deficit shrank to 9.68 billion U.S. dollars in the first seven months of the current 2018-19 fiscal year (July 2018-June 2019) as the pace of growth in exports beat the increase in imports, central bank data showed Thursday.

In the July-January period, the trade deficit was 3.23 percent lower than the deficit recorded in the same period of the previous fiscal year 2017-18, the Bangladesh Bank (BB) data showed.

A BB official who preferred to be unnamed said the country's import payment was 33.486 billion U.S. dollars, up 7.41 percent, in the July-January period of the current fiscal year, while earnings from exports stood at 23.802 billion U.S. dollars, up 12.81 percent, during the same period.

In the last fiscal year 2017-18, Bangladesh incurred a wider trade deficit.

The country's balance of trade in goods expanded to 18.26 billion U.S. dollars of deficit in the last fiscal year 2017-18, compared with 9.47 billion U.S. dollars in the previous 2016-17 fiscal year.