Bangladesh’s forex reserves fall to about 31.24 bln USD in January

DHAKA, Feb. 5 (NsNewsWire) — Bangladesh‘s foreign exchange reserves at the end of January stood at over 31 billion U.S. dollars, down about 780 million U.S. dollars from their level at the end of December, the central bank data showed on Monday, reports Xinhua.
Bangladesh Bank (BB) data showed the country’s foreign exchange reserves stood at 31,235.44 million U.S. dollars in January compared with 32,016.25 million U.S. dollars in December.

A BB official who preferred to be unnamed said there is no reason at all to worry about the decline of the reserves due mainly to soaring  import cost which reached 27.823 billion U.S. dollars at the end of the first of the current fiscal year 2018-19 (July 2018-June 2019).
For a Bangladesh like economy, according to the official, forex reserves equivalent to about six months’ import bills are considered adequate.
Bangladesh‘s foreign exchange reserves crossed the 33-billion-U.S. dollar mark in June 2017 amid a boom in the inflow of remittances ahead of one of the biggest Muslim religious festivals Eid-ul-Fitr.  Enditem