Bangladesh’s foreign exchange reserves fell to $31 billion.
The Asian Clearing Union (ACU) was paid $105 million on Tuesday from the reserve as import liability.
As a result, the reserves stood at $31.15 billion.
For all latest news, follow The Briefings Today Facebook channel.
With this reserve balance, import expenditure of about four months ($8 billion per month) can be met.
Last March 1, the reserve was $32.30 billion. At the same time a year ago, reserves stood at around $44 billion.
ACU is an international transaction settlement system, through which transactions between Bangladesh, Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, Bhutan, India, Iran and Pakistan are settled.
Due to their situation, Sri Lanka withdrew from ACU last October.
Debts are settled between themselves every two months.
Meanwhile, the central bank has taken various initiatives to prevent the decline of reserves.
The International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) first tranche of $470 million has been added to its reserves.
The reserves reached a record-high $48 billion mark in August 2021.
However, the global Covid-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine war are costing more than the amount of foreign exchange that is coming in.
The central bank is constantly selling foreign currency reserves to meet the increased demand for dollars.
It has so far sold more than $10 billion to various banks for emergency imports for the current financial year.
In FY22, $7.62 billion worth of dollars was sold by the central bank. On the other hand, due to the sale of dollars, money is coming from the market to Bangladesh Bank, but at the expense of depleting the forex reserve.
