The country’s foreign exchange reserves have been fluctuating around $20 billion for several months. At the beginning of the recently departed January, it rose to 21 billion, but in the middle of the month, after the payment of Akura’s bill, it decreased to 19 billion. For the past few weeks, it has remained close to $20 billion. Finally, it has increased again to $20 billion.
The latest information from Bangladesh Bank says that as of Wednesday (February 5), according to the IMF’s calculation method BPM-6, the foreign exchange reserves have increased slightly to $20.20 billion or $2,200,163,000. According to the separate calculations of the central bank on the same day, the total reserves of the country are now 2554 million dollars or 25.54 billion dollars.
Remittances sent by expatriates in the outgoing year 2024 exceeded 26 billion dollars and set a new record. Throughout the year, expatriate Bangladeshis have sent a total of 26.89 billion dollars of foreign currency to banking channels from different countries of the world, never before has such amount of remittances been received.
The previous fiscal year 2023-24 ended with a large deficit of $6.51 billion in the current account balance of foreign transactions. However, the current fiscal year 2024-25 has brought good news. At the end of the first six months of the current fiscal year (July-December), the current account surplus stood at $33 million. However, a month ago, there was a current account deficit of $19.1 million. In the previous fiscal year (2023-24), the current account deficit was about $346.5 million. According to the central bank, the current account deficit decreased by 117.27 percent in December compared to November.
In the first six months (July-December) of the current financial year, goods and services worth 2,232,400,000 dollars have been exported. Goods worth $32.8 billion were imported during the same period. This resulted in a trade deficit of $9.76 billion. A month ago, this deficit was $7.93 billion. Accordingly, the trade deficit increased by $1.82 billion in a month. In the same period of the previous fiscal year, the trade deficit was $1.87 billion. Accordingly, despite the increase in a month, the trade deficit decreased by 10.22 percent compared to the same period last year.
