Bangladesh Bank's foreign exchange (forex) reserves have crossed record $34 billion (Tk 3,423 crore) milestone for the first time.
The country's foreign exchange reserves stood at $34.23 billion as of June 3 (Wednesday), said the central bank.
Officials said the reserves have risen due to a drop in import spending as well as foreign loan assistance from donor agencies like World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).
Earlier, in September 2017, the maximum reserve exceeded $33.68 billion. Since then, it has hovered above $31.5 billion and reached $33.46 billion on Tuesday.
According to the central bank, in the first nine months of the current fiscal year 2019-20 (July-March), Bangladesh earned $2,825.20 crore in the export sector including EPZ.
In contrast, it spent $4,033 crore on imports.
As a result, at the end of March, the trade deficit in the country stood at $1,207.80 crore.
During the period under review, imports declined by 4.81 percent while exports by 6.34 percent. However, remittances increased by 16.06 percent.
Remittances declined for two months in March and April due to global coronavirus lockdown. But after the situation started getting normal, the expatriates again sent remittance worth $150.34 crore to the country in May.
In the July-May period, the expatriates sent home $1,636.46 crore in remittances.
However, the central bank officials said that the reserves would go down again after payment of the foreign exchange debt as well as routine payment to the Asian Clearing Union (ACU) every two months.
The ACU involves Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Iran, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and the Maldives through which intraregional transactions among the participating central banks are settled on a multilateral basis.
