Taka falls for 16th time, 1 USD now Tk 92.95

The Bangladesh currency today depreciated further against the US dollar, hitting Tk 92.95 on the interbank platform.

The exchange rate stood at Tk 92.9 per dollar on June 20 before falling by Tk 0.05 on Tuesday, the 16th decline alone this year.

In order to prevent a massive fall of the taka, the Bangladesh Bank has so far injected more than $7 billion into the market this fiscal year to help banks settle import bills, a central bank official said.

Still, the foreign exchange market is facing a shortage of US dollars due to the soaring import payments and the declining trend of remittance.

The country's import payments have shot up since the end of last year because of the rising prices of commodities in the global market.

Between July and April, imports went up by 41 per cent year-on-year 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.

The remittance, the cheapest source of foreign currencies for Bangladesh, fell 16 per cent year-on-year to $19.2 billion in the first 11 months of the fiscal year.

All these led to the decline in the foreign exchange reserves to $41.38 billion on June 15, which was $46.15 billion on December 31.