Home ›› 10 Jun 2022 ›› News
The government plans to restrain the import of luxury and dispensable goods and cautiously monitor the under and over-invoicing to keep the exchange rate of taka competitive against the US dollar.
“Import-dependent and non-essential government expenditures will be halted or reduced,” said Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal while placing the national budget for FY23 in parliament on Thursday.
He also said that the pace of implementation of low-priority projects will be slowed while enhancing the implementation of high and medium-priority projects.
The government will take these initiatives to maintain stability in the exchange rate of the taka and keep foreign exchange reserves at a comfortable level.
In recent times, taka continuously depreciated against the American greenback thanks to the growing import payments, which created a burden on importers, but helped boost export and remittance earnings.
The inter-bank exchange rate was at Tk 92 per dollar on Tuesday, up from Monday’s Tk 91.95. This was the 11th depreciation of the taka against the US dollar this year so far. The country’s foreign exchange reserves also dropped to $41.70 billion on Wednesday from $42.1 billion on June 1 due to the dollar selling spree of the central bank.
As part of the move to restrain the import of luxury and dispensable goods, the supplementary duty is set to be increased for motor vehicles in FY2022-23.
