Bangladesh’s foreign exchange reserves recently dipped below $39 billion due to high import payments.
The reserves stood at $38.98 billion on Sunday, down from $39.08 billion on September 1, according to data from Bangladesh Bank.
According to an official of Bangladesh Bank, the reserves will slip even further, to below $38 billion, after the central bank clears import payments to the tune of $1.73 billion to the Asian Clearing Union (ACU) within a day or two.
The country’s reserves stood at $46.19 billion in September last year.
The ACU is an arrangement by which the participants settle payments for intra-regional transactions among participating central banks on a net multilateral basis.
Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Iran, the Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka are the members of the Tehran-headquartered ACU, which was established in December 1974.
The member countries of the ACU clear their payments every two months.
Remittance is now maintaining an upward trend, but it has failed to protect the reserves from the fall because of the high import payments against the slower-than-expected export earnings, the official said.
Migrant workers sent $2.03 billion in remittance in August after they had logged inflow to the tune of $2.09 billion in July.
Import payments rose 23.23 per cent year-on-year to $5.86 billion in July, when export earnings grew by 14 per cent to $3.88 billion, central bank data showed.
