Bangladesh Bank (BB) has attributed discrepancies in the country’s export earnings to duplication in data reported by the National Board of Revenue (NBR) and the Export Promotion Bureau (EPB). The BB’s verification system identified approximately $23 billion in duplicate export data over 20 months across the last two financial years. This discrepancy has significantly affected financial statistics, shifting the current account from surplus to deficit and altering the fiscal account from deficit to surplus due to reduced repatriated remittances against exports. The central bank’s letter to the government highlighted that NBR noted multiple export accounts for the same goods, which were mistakenly inputted as new entries in the server. BB collects export earnings data directly from scheduled bank branches, minimizing discrepancies compared to EPB’s data. EPB’s inclusion of manufacturing charges and sample product prices further contributed to the data mismatch, according to BB’s explanation.
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