DHAKA, Nov. 3 (nsnewswire) — The country’s foreign exchange reserves at the end of the last month reached 17.35 billion U.S. dollars, a Bangladesh Bank (BB)  said Sunday.

  The BB official said that foreign exchange reserves stood at 17,345.40 million U.S. dollars at the end of the last month after reaching 16,154 million U.S. dollars at the end of September.

   “Our foreign exchange reserves hit an all-time high of over 17 billion U.S. dollars in the last week of September,” said the official who did not like to be named.

   It reflects Bangladesh’s strength from the economical and financial point of view, he added.

    In the middle of August, according to the official, Bangladesh’s foreign exchange reserves touched the 16 billion U.S. dollar mark for the first time.

   The South Asian nation, with a population of about 153 million, needs a reserve of about 10 billion U.S. dollars to meet its import bills for three months in light of an internationally accepted standard.