Staff Correspondent: The country’s foreign exchange reserve has now declined further to nearly $23.70 billion in line with the International Monetary Fund (IMF)-set standard, according to Bangladesh Bank data.
But, the central bank said Bangladesh’s gross forex reserve stood at $29.21 at the end of last week according to its own calculation.
The IMF has asked Bangladesh Bank to exclude the money it invested on creating Long Term Fund (LTF), Green Transformation Fund, money given to Sonali Bank to help Bangladesh Biman purchase aircraft and the fund given to assist Rabnabad channel dredging from its reserve calculation.
As per the IMF suggestions, the central bank has been publishing reserve data following the lender’s BPM-6 standard.
The reserve is set to decline further as Bangladesh has to make $1.2 billion Asian Clearing Union (ACU) payment by early next week.
The reserve is on the decline since the start of Russia-Ukraine war that has created an acute dollar crisis in Bangladesh as the war-induced food and energy price hike has increased its import bills.
The government has restricted fancy item imports to lower swelling import as a means to address the dollar crisis.
However, the central bank has been continuously selling dollars to the commercial banks to help them opening letter of credits (LC) for import of essential commodities.
The forex reserve hit its peak at $48 billion in August 2021, but it came down to $39 billion in August in 2022 and slipped further to $29 billion in line with Bangladesh Bank’s own calculation.
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