Forex reserves would be better from now on: BB

DE Online Report
The second installment of the International Monetary Fund (IMF)’s $4.7 billion dollar loan has got approval at the board meeting which will be added to the Bangladesh foreign exchange reserves on Friday, said Bangladesh Bank’s Executive Director and spokesman Md Mesbaul Huque.
He stated it at a press conference on Wednesday (December 13) afternoon.
Mesbaul Huque said the final decision to release the fund was taken at the IMF’s board meeting on Tuesday. “The second tranche of $680.98 million is going to be added to our foreign exchange reserves by Friday (December 14).”
Besides, he said $400 million from the Asian Development Bank (ADB), $90 million from a South Korea’s fund and $620 million from different donor agencies would come this month. “So, $1.31 billion will be added to the reserves this month,” he said.
The spokesman said Bangladesh’s existing gross reserves are $24.66 billion. According to the BPM-6, the gross reserves are $19.13 billion.
Expressing satisfaction over receiving the second instalment, the central bank’s spokesman said, “The foreign exchange reserves will not go down anymore from now on.”
The IMF approved a loan of $4.7 billion for Bangladesh in January this year. The loan was given to deal with economic crisis. Immediately after approving the loan, the IMF released the first tranche of $476.2 million of the loan in February this year.
It is learnt that the IMF recommended a cautious monetary policy to restore macroeconomic stability in the short term.
Along with this, the global lender has said to be more flexible fiscal policy in the currency exchange rate as a support of the policy.
Before and after receiving the first tranche, Bangladesh took several steps to reform the structure of its financial sector and its policies, including raising the price of power and gas and cutting subsidies at different sectors.
It has continued the reforms after the initial round of funds came in.
In October, Bangladesh reached a staff-level agreement with an IMF team coming to the country to review the use of funds released in the first stage of the loan agreement.
The decision paved the way of fund release in the second tranche of the loan agreement.