Bangladesh Bank Governor Presses India to Buy More Amid a Widening $7.8 Billion Trade Gap

Bangladesh Bank's governor used a courtesy call this week to make a direct ask of India, buy more from us. Governor Md Mostaqur Rahman met Indian High Commissioner Dinesh Trivedi at the central bank's head office on September 22 and urged New Delhi to increase imports from Bangladesh, framing it as the most straightforward way to chip away at a trade imbalance that has become one of the most lopsided in South Asia. He also called on India to put more capital into Bangladesh's technology, manufacturing and industrial sectors, and raised the idea of expanding Bangla QR and cross border digital payment links between the two countries.

The number behind the request is stark. Bangladesh's industries minister told parliament earlier this year that the country's trade deficit with India stood at 7.86 billion dollars in fiscal year 2024-25, by far the largest gap Bangladesh runs with any of its South Asian neighbours. Bangladesh exported just 1.76 billion dollars worth of goods to India that year while importing 9.62 billion dollars worth, a roughly five to one imbalance. By comparison, Bangladesh's deficit with Pakistan was 681 million dollars, and with Afghanistan and Bhutan it was in the tens of millions. Against that backdrop, Nepal, Sri Lanka and the Maldives are the rare countries where Bangladesh actually runs a surplus.

A deficit that keeps widening, not narrowing

The India specific numbers sit inside a bigger and equally uncomfortable national picture. Bangladesh's overall trade deficit hit a three year high of 27.28 billion dollars in FY26, a 34 percent jump from the year before, even as exports barely moved. Exports for the year came in at 43.85 billion dollars, virtually flat, while imports climbed 10.5 percent to 71.14 billion dollars, the largest annual increase since FY22. Analysts attribute much of that import growth to higher petroleum prices and broader inflation rather than any pickup in productive investment. Khondaker Golam Moazzem of the Centre for Policy Dialogue said at the time that the widening gap points to weak external performance, and that global factors, tariffs out of the United States, inflation in Western markets, and ongoing supply disruptions, bear more responsibility than anything happening domestically. Abdur Razzaque of RAPID added a more specific worry, noting that capital machinery imports, the kind that signal businesses are gearing up to expand, remained depressed even as total imports rose, a sign that investment led growth has yet to materialise.

It is against that wider backdrop that the governor's pitch to India reads less like a routine diplomatic courtesy and more like an attempt to address the single largest piece of Bangladesh's import bill. Roughly a third of Bangladesh's total trade deficit last fiscal year can be traced to the gap with India alone, based on the most recent full year figures available, which makes New Delhi a natural first call for any Bangladeshi official looking to move the overall number.

What Bangladesh is offering in return

Rahman did not come to the meeting empty handed. He told the Indian delegation, which also included Deputy High Commissioner Pawankumar Badhe and Second Secretary Gourab Kumar Agarwal, that Bangladesh Bank has already rolled out what he called multiple investment friendly policy initiatives, including rules that let foreign investors repatriate capital and profits back to their home countries with fewer obstacles than in years past. The message was aimed squarely at the investment half of his ask, since attracting Indian manufacturing and industrial capital requires convincing investors that getting money back out of Bangladesh will not become its own headache.

Trivedi's response suggested India sees room for exactly that kind of simplification. The high commissioner told the Bangladeshi side that further easing of foreign investment procedures would help, a polite but pointed signal that Dhaka's reforms, while real, have not yet gone far enough to unlock a meaningfully larger flow of Indian capital. The two sides also discussed technical cooperation and the mechanics of linking Bangla QR with India's own digital payment rails, an idea that would sit alongside Bangladesh Bank's broader push this year to make Bangla QR the default way Bangladeshi merchants get paid, including a rule taking effect October 1 that forces instant settlement on every Bangla QR transaction.

Metric (FY2024-25 or FY26)	Figure
Bangladesh's exports to India	$1.76 billion
Bangladesh's imports from India	$9.62 billion
Bangladesh-India trade deficit	$7.86 billion
Bangladesh-Pakistan trade deficit	$681 million
Bangladesh's total trade deficit, FY26	$27.28 billion (34% YoY rise)
Bangladesh's total exports, FY26	$43.85 billion (roughly flat)
Bangladesh's total imports, FY26	$71.14 billion (up 10.5%)

Why this meeting matters beyond the photo op

Courtesy calls between a new high commissioner and a central bank governor happen routinely and rarely produce headlines on their own. What makes this one worth watching is the timing. It comes as Bangladesh is simultaneously trying to attract capital for a first ever international sovereign bond sale by December, a plan BD Financial Review has covered in detail, and as rising domestic treasury yields show just how tightly stretched the government's own finances already are. A country trying to convince international bondholders its economy is sound has every incentive to also be seen actively courting foreign direct investment from a large neighbour, even if the practical results of any single meeting take months or years to show up in the trade data.

There is also a domestic political dimension. Bangladesh's commerce minister has separately told parliament that India accounts for the country's largest trade gap in South Asia, a line that tends to draw scrutiny whenever it is repeated in public. A governor publicly and specifically asking India to buy more Bangladeshi goods gives the government something concrete to point to the next time the question comes up, regardless of whether Indian import volumes actually move in response.

For now, the meeting produced intentions rather than numbers, more imports, more investment, smoother repatriation rules, easier digital payment links, none of which come with a deadline or a target attached. Whether any of it narrows a deficit that has been widening for years will depend on decisions made far from Bangladesh Bank's head office, in Indian boardrooms and in New Delhi's own trade policy, not on a single September courtesy call.