Finance
Reserve Lowest reserves in 7 years
Dhaka, May 9: Due to Russia-Ukraine war situation, the country is facing dollar crisis. At this time, Bangladesh Bank took various initiatives to save dollars. However, the pressure on reserves is not easing. Instead, dollars are constantly being supplied to the market from the reserves to pay the import bill.
In particular, the payment of Asian Clearing Union (ACU) bills reduced the country's foreign exchange reserves by another $118 crore or $1.18 billion. Reserves fell to 29.77 billion, which is the lowest in the last seven years.
Calculated according to International Monetary Fund (IMF) standards, if 5.5 billion dollars of export development fund is excluded, the country's total usable reserves will be 24.27 billion dollars. This information has emerged from the relevant department of Bangladesh Bank.
Earlier, in April 2016, foreign exchange reserves fell to $29 billion for the first time. However, by the end of that year, reserves exceeded $30 billion. Reserves crossed the $33 billion mark in June 2017. The country's foreign exchange reserves were around 32 to 33 billion dollars during the Corona period. Then, in August 2021, reserves crossed the record $48 billion mark for the first time.
ACU's member countries include - Bhutan, India, Iran, Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal and Pakistan. They left ACU because the situation in Sri Lanka was deplorable. The central banks of the member countries pay the import bills every two months.
