The dollar crisis is not over yet. The banks are unable to open letters of credit (LC) as per demand. Many banks cannot pay the bill for the LCs that they opened. Many banks could not repay the loans from foreign banks within due time.

In such a situation, the Prime Bank and the First Security Islami Bank sold dollars to the Bangladesh Bank on Thursday. This was the first time that the central bank purchased dollars in the 2022-23 fiscal.

According to the sources in the Bangladesh Bank, the central bank has started purchasing dollars from banks to show a healthy reserve at the end of the current fiscal. Besides, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has a condition that the actual reserve should be USD 24.46 billion by June this year.

For this, Bangladesh Bank has purchased a total of USD 35 million from the Prime Bank and the First Security Islami Bank on Thursday at a rate of Tk 106 per dollar. At the same time, it has continued selling dollars to clear import liabilities at the same rate.

The central bank sold USD 65 million yesterday, Thursday. With this, the foreign reserves of the country now stand at USD 30.13 billion. However, the actual reserves are less than USD 6 billion.

Besides, the Bangladesh Bank will have to clear a due of almost USD 1.2 billion for the bill of the Asian Clearing Union (ACU) in the first week of July. The reserves will fall again after that.

Assistant spokesperson of the Bangladesh Bank Sarowar Hossain said, “Overseas remittance is increasing. Besides, the amount of dollars the banks have is also rising. The central bank is purchasing dollars only if any bank wants to sell. It has continued selling dollars to clear the import liabilities at the same time. We are overcoming the crisis slowly.”

The managing director of the bank refused to talk about this. However, bank officials on condition of anonymity are saying that many banks have failed to clear the import liability. Amid this, the central bank has purchased dollars almost forcefully. If any bank has any surplus, then the other banks are ready to purchase that.

The dollar purchased from First Security Islami Bank was borrowed from the Offshore Unit.

According to the figures of the Bangladesh Bank, the expatriate income is increasing. The total amount of expatriate income as of 21 June this year was USD 1.67 billion, which was USD 1.15 billion last year at the same time. As such, the expatriate income has increased by 45 per cent.

The banks have a dollar ceiling of USD 1.76 billion. However, they have only USD 289 million at their possession at the moment. Besides, the banks have some USD 3.57 billion in nostro accounts, in foreign reserve accounts of the Bangladesh Bank and in cash, which is known as the liquidity of the dollar market. It fell below USD 2 billion by the end of the last year.

The country’s foreign reserve fell below USD 30 billion last May. The foreign reserve reached USD 30.01 billion dollar Wednesday. The central bank received a portion of the USD 400-million loan from the Asian Development Bank (ADB). It was added to the foreign reserve.

Besides, the central bank retracted the expired dollars of the Export Development Fund (EDF) from the Exim Bank. With that, the reserve rose to USD 30.13 billion yesterday. On that very same day, the central bank purchased USD 35 million from the two private banks.

The Bangladesh Bank’s methods of calculation do not comply with the IMF as some USD 8.20 billion from the forex reserve has been spent in different sectors, including investments various bonds, foreign currency and gold, export development fund, loan to Sonali Bank for Bangladesh Biman to purchase jet aircraft, funds for dredging Rabnabad channel of the Payra port and loans to crisis-hit Sri Lanka, which has reduced USD 6 billion now.

The IMF approved the USD 4.7 billion-loan proposal for Bangladesh last January. One of the major conditions for the loan was to increase the usable reserve to at least USD 24.46 billion by June.

As per the IMF standard, Bangladesh’s forex reserve should be at USD 25.30 billion in September and USD 26.80 billion in December.

Ahsan H Mansur, executive director of the Policy Research Institute, told Prothom Alo, “The dollar situation has not improved. Nobody can say when the crisis will be over either. It is also important to identify all the unsettled foreign liabilities.”

“The central bank is purchasing dollars to meet the condition of the IMF. The banks do not have dollars at the moment. The decision to buy dollars from the banks in this situation was not prudent at all. Increasing forex reserves this way is not a sustainable solution,” he added.