According to Section 7(a) of the Bangladesh Bank Order 1972, the Bangladesh Bank is entrusted with the task of holding and managing the official foreign reserves of Bangladesh.
Foreign reserves serve as gatekeepers to repaying various countries’ import liabilities, and, as per the international standard, a country must have at least one foreign reserve that can repay its import liabilities for at least three months. can do.
According to the latest data from Bangladesh Bank, foreign reserves as per IMF’s BPM6 as of November 22 stood at US$19.52 billion and total foreign reserves stood at US$25.16 billion.
Forex reserves fell below US$25 billion last week, but a rally in global bullion markets helped forex reserves cross US$25 billion as Bangladesh Bank diverted reserves abroad into various bonds, currencies and Invested in gold.
Although foreign reserves stood at US$19.52 billion as per IMF’s BPM6, net reserves fell below this estimate. Over USD 2 billion in the form of IMF SDRs, over USD 1 billion in the form of foreign exchange clearing accounts in banks and about USD 500 million in the form of Asian Clearing Union (ACU) bills will be excluded, Thus, the net reserves are slightly less than USD 16. Arab. Regarding those payments, experts say that at present there is no hurry in paying the IMF’s liabilities.
Bangladesh’s foreign reserves fell to US$1 billion in the fiscal year 1996–97, from slightly more than US$3 billion in the 1994–95 fiscal year. Foreign exchange reserves peaked at US$2 billion by fiscal year 2001–02 and started increasing thereafter. Due to the global recession, reserves declined from US$7 billion to US$5 billion in fiscal year 2007–09. Since then, it continued to rise, and exploded amid the coronavirus pandemic due to a decline in imports and an increase in inflows of remittances. Foreign reserves crossed US$48 billion in 2021.
