The currency of Bangladesh has depreciated further against the US dollar, hitting Tk 92.95 on the interbank platform yesterday.
The exchange rate stood at Tk 92.90 per dollar on Monday before slipping by another Tk 0.05 yesterday, the 16th decline of the taka this year.
The local currency is losing its strength against the American greenback owing to a shortage of US dollars caused by a sizeable reduction in the foreign currency reserves.
The reserves have taken a big hit because of a surge in import payments driven by higher commodity prices globally and the declining trend of remittance.
Between July and April, imports soared by 41 per cent to $68.66 billion, while exports grew 35 per cent to $41 billion. This resulted in a record trade deficit — the gap between exports and imports — of $27.56 billion, up 53 per cent year-on-year.
Bangladesh has had to spend $8.2 billion additionally in 2022 compared to 2021 due to higher prices of nine essential commodities in the international market, namely crude oil and refined oil, liquefied natural gas, wheat, fertilizer, palm oil, coal, soybean oil, maize and rice, finance ministry documents showed.
The remittance, the cheapest source of foreign currencies for Bangladesh, was down 16 per cent year-on-year to $19.2 billion in the first 11 months of the current financial year, ending on June 30.
All these brought the reserves down to $41.38 billion on June 15, which was $46.15 billion on December 31.
In order to prevent a massive fall of the local currency and help banks settle import bills, the Bangladesh Bank has so far injected more than $7 billion into the market in the outgoing fiscal year, a central bank official said.
