Home ›› 09 May 2023 ›› Front
Bangladesh’s foreign exchange reserves are falling unabated despite a series of initiatives put in place by Bangladesh Bank (BB), and it stood at $29.80 billion on Monday after making the Asian Clearing Union (ACU) payments.
A senior BB official said that $1.12 billion in ACU import bills for March and April was cleared on Sunday night.
The ACU is an arrangement to settle payments for intra-regional transactions among its member countries. The bills are cleared every two months.
The country’s forex reserves were at $41.82 billion on June 30 and at $44.01 billion in April last year.
A senior BB official, requesting anonymity, said, “The regulator is continuing to sell US dollars to banks so that they can cover import bills, and it is impacting the forex reserves despite the initiatives to halt its steady decline.”
Banks, especially the state-run ones, are taking USD support to settle import payments of government entities such as the Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation, Bangladesh Agricultural Development Corporation, and Bangladesh Chemical Industries Corporation.
The official said that every day BB sells $60-$70 million to banks. In the first 10 months of FY2022-23, BB has pumped over $12 billion into the banks.
Import payments, however, have dropped owing to BB’s strengthened monitoring, aimed at reducing the pressure on forex reserves. But industry insiders say the forex market will face further pressure in the coming days as export and remittance both fell in April.
The country’s export earnings declined by 16.52 per cent to $3.96 billion in April, compared to the same month last year.
Meanwhile, remittance inflow decreased by 16.28 per cent to $1.68 billion in April, compared year-on-year, according to the latest BB data.
