Dhaka, Bangladesh (BBN)– The central bank of Bangladesh purchased US$65 million more from a state-owned commercial bank (SCB) Sunday to keep the inter-bank foreign exchange market stable.
“We’ve bought the US dollar from a leading SCB to enable the bank comply with the net open position (NOP) rules for holding foreign exchange properly,” BB senior officials told BBN in Dhaka. He also said such intervention will continue in line with the market requirement.
On Thursday, the BB similarly purchased $66 million from different commercial banks on the same ground, the BB officials said.
The central bank bought $230 million from the commercial banks directly form July 2 to July 12 as part of its intervention in the market, which has pushed the foreign exchange reserve up.
The country’s foreign exchange reserve stood at $7.21 billion Sunday from $7.19 billion of the previous working day, the officials confirmed.
In the 2008-09 fiscal, the central bank of Bangladesh bought a total of $1.511 billion directly from the commercial banks against only $202.50 million of the previous fiscal, the BB’s data showed.
The BB officials also said the flow of foreign exchange has increased in the market because of falling trend in import recently.
The country’s overall import dropped by nearly 11 per cent in June over that of the pervious month because of a falling trend in prices of commodities in the global market, they added.
The letters of credit (LCs) against import worth $1.428 billion were settled in June over that of $1.605 billion in May, according to the central bank provisional statistics.
BBN/SS/SI/AD-13July09-1:18 pm (BST)
