Finance
Reserve Central Bank's protest over the reserve account
Own Correspondent, Dhaka, 30 November 2023: Bangladesh Bank has protested over a report on the front page of a national daily titled 'Usable reserves fall below $16 billion' on Tuesday.
According to the protest letter, the report states that the amount of 'usable reserves is less than 16 billion or 16 billion dollars'.
Actually gross or total reserves are calculated including local investment. On the other hand, accounting is done without local investment according to International Monetary Fund (IMF) accounting method BPM-6.
Reserve calculated under BPM-6 method is immediately usable and gross reserve is usable subject to realization of investment. Currently, the gross reserve of Bangladesh Bank is 25.16 billion dollars and the reserve calculated by BPM-6 method is 19.52 billion dollars. That is, the entire reserve shown as per BPM-6 is usable. Bangladesh Bank feels that more caution should be taken in providing the information of gross and BPM-6 reserve account to avoid confusion in the public mind in the future.
