Due to the payment of import bills, the foreign exchange reserves in Bangladesh Bank have fallen below 20 billion US dollars. In this phase, 121 million dollars have been given to ACU for the import liability of September-October.
This liability was adjusted on Tuesday (November 7) from Bangladesh Bank's account at the Federal Reserve in New York, USA. After that, the exact amount of reserves will be available on Wednesday (November 8).
Bangladesh Bank spokesperson and executive director Majbaul Haque said that the reserve has decreased due to payment of Asian Clearing Union (ACU) bills.
According to the data of Bangladesh Bank, according to the BPM 6 method accepted by the IMF on November 1, they had a gross reserve status of 20.66 billion 2 thousand 66 million dollars. After that, Bangladesh Bank sold 14 billion 40 million dollars. Then again some amount of foreign debt was added. After paying the ACU bill, the reserves are now below 20 billion dollar.
Before this, last July-August, Bangladesh paid 131 million dollars for ACU’s debt. This time the liability is slightly reduced.
The Asian Clearing Union (ACU) is an inter-regional settlement system between central banks. Through this, the imports and exports between the nine Asian countries are settled every two months. However, Bangladesh's transactions with other countries are completed immediately. ACU member countries are Bangladesh, India, Iran, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Bhutan and Maldives.
Officials of Bangladesh Bank said that the banks deposit dollars to Bangladesh Bank every week as the price of goods imported from ACU member countries. Every two months the central bank pays this liability on behalf of the banks. Then the reserve suddenly decreases and then increases again.
The central banks of the rest of the country have to pay the transaction amount every two months. Among these countries, India receives more dollars from other countries than it remits. Most of the countries spend more dollars than they earn. Sri Lanka has recently been dropped from this list due to debt default.