Bangladesh's foreign reserves decreased to 37 billion dollars at Sept 2022

 

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Bangladesh Bank's reserves stand at $37 billion after payment of import duties. Last Wednesday, the Asian Clearing Union (ACU) billed $1.74 billion for July-August imports. On the same day, Bangladesh Bank sold another 50 million dollars to commercial banks. In total, reserves fell to $37.20 billion. However, if the reserve is calculated excluding the money provided to various funds, the usable reserve of the country is now 30 billion dollars.

According to the International Monetary Fund's (IMF) Balance of Payments and International Investment Position (BPM6) manual, only the usable portion should be shown as reserves. Accordingly, 600 million dollars provided to EDF, 20 million dollars to GTF, 3.85 million dollars to LTFF and 4.8 million dollars given to Bangladesh Biman through Sonali Bank are not usable. Out of this 628 million 65 million dollars, 200 million dollars have been given to Sri Lanka under currency swap. And there are International Islamic Trade Finance Corporation (ITFC) deposits, which are shown as reserves.

According to Bangladesh Bank, the country's foreign exchange reserves crossed the $37 billion mark on July 28, 2020. It increased to 48.06 billion dollars in August last year during the Corona crisis. However, the central bank is constantly selling dollars from the reserves as import costs have increased and expatriate income has decreased. 8 million dollars were sold to some banks yesterday. With this, the central bank has sold 276 million 95 million dollars so far this fiscal year. 762 million 17 million dollars were sold last financial year. The previous financial year where the central bank bought 7.93 billion dollars from the market. In this, the foreign exchange reserves have reduced drastically due to the payment of ACU's liabilities.

Through this, the foreign exchange reserves have decreased by 11.5 billion dollars in the last one year. According to the data of Bangladesh Bank, the amount of reserves in the last week of August last year was 48.60 billion. And on Wednesday after ACU payment stood at 37.20 billion. Accordingly, the reserves have decreased by 11.40 billion dollars in one year.