The Foreign reserve of Bangladesh stood at $32.30 billion on March 01, which was $45.99 billion on last March 01, 2022. That is 30 percent less than the last year.
According to the data of Bangladesh Bank, the foreign exchange reserves in the country now stand at 31 billion dollars. On March 7, the Asian Clearing Union (ACU) paid $105 million from reserves as import liability. As a result, the reserve stood at 31.28 billion dollars last March 15.
The highest reserve in the history of Bangladesh was $48 billion in August 2021. It is possible to pay four and a half months of import liabilities with current reserves. Imports averaged about $7 billion (6.87 billion) per month last fiscal year.
Imports have averaged $7 billion (6.89 billion) since April last year despite the tightening of imports.
However, the rate of opening new Letters of Credit (LC)s decreased slightly during this period to an average of $5.68 billion per month.
According to International Monetary Foundation (IMF), they follow BPM6 Methodology, which is the reserve accounting method prescribed by IMF for member countries. All current foreign liabilities and all funds are adjusted with reserves in this method. Several funds including Export Development Fund (EDF) were created from the reserves of Bangladesh. The fund amount is $8 billion.
If this amount of dollars are removed from the reserve, the reserve amount of Bangladesh stands at $24 billion. And if the current foreign liabilities are excluded, the number of reserves will decrease further.
Bangladesh Bank has not yet released the calculation of how much will be reduced by this method. At the end of last December, the short-term foreign debt liability of the country's private sector stood at $16.41 billion. And at the government level, short-term foreign debt liability stood at $2.11 billion last December.
Expatriate income increased in February, which is $ 22 billion more than in the same period last year. Last month, $ 156 million came to the country. $ 196 million came in the previous month in January. It was around $ 1.7 billion in December.
Bangladesh Bank officials say that various initiatives have been taken to ensure that export income and remittances (expatriate income) legitimately come to the country. This has increased the speed of expatriate income. Bangladesh Bank officials believe that this flow of remittances will continue in March and April as there are fasts and two Eids ahead.
Bangladesh Bank Executive Director and spokesman Md Mezbaul Haque told to The Daily Post that, our foreign reserve is $ 31.2 billion now and the inward remittance is $ 1164 million in this current month. He called the reserve amount a relaxing situation for the country now.
JH
