Reserves drop below $30 billion

The country's foreign exchange reserves yesterday declined sharply to $29.77 billion as the Bangladesh Bank cleared import bills to the tune of $1.18 billion to the Asian Clearing Union (ACU).

The reserves stood at $42.20 billion in May last year, meaning that it decreased 29.45 per cent in a year, data from Bangladesh Bank showed.

The central bank made the ACU payment last week, which was adjusted with the country's reserves yesterday, a BB official said.

He said the reserves faced trouble after every ACU payment in recent months.

ACU is an arrangement to settle payments for intra-regional transactions among member countries, including Bangladesh.

India, Bhutan, Iran, the Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka are other members of the Tehran-headquartered ACU.

The member countries of the ACU clear their payments once in every two months.

Bangladesh's foreign exchange reserves soared to a historic high of $48 billion in August 2021.

Although the deficit in trade and current accounts decreased significantly in the last couple of months, the shortfall in the financial account widened to a large extent worsening the volume of the reserves.

Under such a situation, the central bank injects dollars into banks almost every working day.

Between July 1 and April 27 of the ongoing financial year, the central bank supplied a record $11.79 billion to banks in contrast to $7.62 billion provided in the entire fiscal year of 2021-22.