Staff Reporter :
The country’s foreign currency reserves have declined to $37.06 billion after the routine payment of $1.73 billion made to the Asian Clearing Union (ACU).
The ACU is an arrangement to settle payments for intra-regional transactions among member countries against imports.
India, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Iran, the Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka are the members of the ACU, whose headquarter is in Tehran. The member countries clear their payments every two months.
The foreign exchange reserves were $38.94 billion on Wednesday and the payment of import bills to ACU brought down the reserves to $37.06 billion on Thursday, said a high official of the Bangladesh Bank.
The forex reserve hit the highest $48 billion in September last year, which is gradually decreasing due to the growing import payments.
On Thursday, the central bank sold $80 million to banks to meet their US dollar shortage.
“The depleting forex reserve will put pressure on the overall macro economy of the country further,” said Dr Zahid Hussain, former lead economist of the World Bank Dhaka office.
“Releasing the pressure, Bangladesh Bank has taken various measures. But, it takes time to impact on,” he added.
However, the country is getting benefits from the measures taken by the central bank. The number of opening of letter of credits (LCs) has reduced by five per cent in August due to the measures.
According to the latest data of the BB, the importers opened LCs worth $5.93 billion in last month, which was $6.22 billion in the previous month (July) and $8.38 billion in June.
The country witnessed the highest number of LCs for $9.88 billion in March. Since then, the central bank has been taking steps to curb the imports.
On the other hand, prices of essential commodities including fuel oil and food items have increased in the international markets due to the Russia-Ukraine war, which has put an unusual pressure on dollar market in the country.
Releasing the pressure, the central bank is selling dollars to keep the foreign currency market stable.
The BB injected over $2.8 billion in last two months (July-August), according to the BB data.
