Forex reserve falls marginally following ACU payments

Country's foreign exchange (forex) reserve fell below the $22- billion mark following the last two months' import payments.  
Officials said Bangladesh made a routine payment of around US$900 million to the Asian Clearing Union (ACU) to foot the bill for imports during the November-December period of the last calendar year.
After the payment, the country's foreign exchange (forex) reserve came down to around $21.61 billion Sunday from $ 22.46 billion as on the previous working day, according to the central bank statistics.
"The central bank has remitted the funds to the ACU headquarters in Tehran in line with the existing provision of the nine-member union," a senior official of the Bangladesh Bank (BB) told the FE.
Under the existing provisions, outstanding import bills and interest accruing thereof are to be paid at the end of every two months.
The central banker also said the amount of payment increased slightly to $900 million in the last instalment from $892 million earlier, due to mainly to higher imports from ACU-member countries.
 "We're importing different items and raw materials from the ACU-member countries, particularly from India, to meet the demand for the commodities on the local market," the BB official noted.
ACU is an arrangement among Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Iran, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and the Maldives through which intra-regional transactions among the participating central banks are settled on a multilateral basis.
The union started its operations in November 1975 to boost trade among the member-countries.
Bangladesh and Myanmar joined the union as the sixth and the seventh members in 1976 and 1977 respectively. Bhutan boarded the bandwagon in December 1999 and the Maldives in January 2010.
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