2024-08-02 15:00:29
The government declared a three-day general holiday with a curfew in the third week of July as the student movement turned violent to demand quota reform in the country. Banks and financial institutions were closed at that time. At that time, the expatriate income did not come in a legitimate way. Due to this, foreign exchange reserves have decreased.
A review of July reserve data published by Bangladesh Bank on Thursday (August 1) showed that, according to International Monetary Fund (IMF) accounting method BPM-6, Bangladesh’s foreign exchange reserves decreased by 1.3 billion US dollars in the last one month. On July 31, gross foreign currency reserves of the country stood at 2 thousand 592 million US dollars (25.92 billion). According to the IMF’s accounting system BPM-6, the reserves are now 2 thousand 48 billion 82 million dollars (20.49 billion).
Last June, the total reserves were 2,681,520,000 US dollars (26,81 billion) and according to BPM-6, the reserves were 21,78 billion or 2,178 billion US dollars. Accordingly, the total reserves decreased by 893.8 million dollars and according to BPM-6 decreased by 130 million dollars.
However, Bangladesh Bank has another account beyond net or real reserves, called Net International Reserve (NIR). This information is given only to the IMF without disclosure. At the end of June 30 of this year, Bangladesh Bank’s net international reserve (NIR) or expendable reserve was 1,600 million US dollars ($16 billion). However, the central bank did not disclose the NIR data in July.
According to central bank sources, usable real reserves are now below $15 billion. It will be difficult to meet three months’ import expenses with this reserve of 5.5 billion dollars per month. Normally a country should have a reserve equal to minimum 3 months import cost.
A decrease in remittances puts pressure on reserves. In such a situation, Bangladesh Bank has given verbal instructions to about 20 banks to bring remittances at higher prices to encourage expatriates to reduce the pressure on reserves. After the introduction of the ‘crawling peg’, the dollar rate in the banks was the highest at Tk 118, but after the verbal instruction of the central bank on Sunday, several banks offered remittance purchase rates from Tk 118 50 paisa to Tk 119. As a result, the dollar price is affected in the open market as well. Dollar price started to rise in the open market. In such a situation yesterday, it was said from the ‘Money Changers Association of Bangladesh’ that the value of each dollar in the open market will be 119 taka. Action will be taken if it is sold at a higher price. However, in the open market today, every dollar was sold at 125 rupees.