The slowdown in exports is not good news at a time when Bangladesh needs foreign currency to overcome both the pressure on its external account and sluggish growth, said two economists today.

The reaction comes as export and remittance, two vital sources of foreign exchange, showed mixed readings.

In April, exports dropped first time in four months while remittances grew 21 percent year-on-year, official data showed.

The fall in exports in April led to a slowdown in overall exports, which hit 3.93 percent in the ten months since July, the first month of the current fiscal year, compared to 4.39 percent in the July-March period of the same fiscal.

Meanwhile, a rise took the overall growth of remittances to 8 percent in the July-April period.

"While the growth of remittance is welcoming, the slowdown in export is not a good sign for the economic growth and balance of payments (BoP)," said Sadiq Ahmed, vice-chairman of the Policy Research Institute (PRI) of Bangladesh.

Economic growth will not pick up without an acceleration in exports, he added, saying that more export is needed to address foreign currency crunch.

Bangladesh has been suffering from the depletion of its foreign exchange reserves and the devaluation of the taka against the US dollar for more than two years. The greenback crisis has persisted despite authorities taking measures to curb imports.

Bangladesh's gross domestic product (GDP), which posted over 6 percent annual average growth in the last 10 years, increased 5.78 percent in the fiscal year 2023-24.

Last month, the International Monetary Fund revised down its GDP forecast to 5.7 percent in 2023-24, from 6 percent forecasted in October amid local and global economic challenges.

The World Bank put the GDP growth figure at 5.6 percent for the same year owing to numerous factors, including high inflation.

Mustafa K Mujeri, executive director at the Institute for Inclusive Finance and Development (InM), said if the slow growth rate in export and remittance earnings prevails, the economic crisis will deepen.

He said although there had been growth in exports and remittances in the July-April period of the current fiscal year, it is not adequate enough to solve the existing dollar crisis.

"It also can impact the manufacturing sector negatively, thus the whole economy, because the industrial sector needs foreign exchange to import raw materials," said Mujeri, a former director general of the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies and a former chief economist of Bangladesh Bank.

"In this situation, the government needs to rethink and review the export policy and find new and innovative ways to boost export earnings."

Ahmed said supportive policies should be adopted to diversify and boost exports.