Dhaka, Bangladesh - Bangladesh has made a routine payment of US$522 million to the Asian Clearing Union (ACU) against imports between July and August of this year, officials said on Sunday.
The payment pushed the foreign exchange reserve down to $8.643 billion Sunday from $9.149 billion the previous day, according to officials at the central bank.
"The central bank has already remitted the fund to the ACU headquarters in Tehran in line with the existing provision of the eight-member union,' a senior official of the Bangladesh Bank (BB), the country's central bank, told AHN Media in Dhaka, preferring anonymity.
Under the existing provisions, outstanding import bills and interest accruing against thereof are settled at the end of every two months among the member countries.
"Our imports from the ACU member countries increased a little bit during the period under review due mainly to the holy month of Ramadan," the BB official said, adding that India is the main trading partner under the ACU arrangement.
A total of $468 million was paid for the May-June period of this year, he added.
Bangladesh's foreign exchange reserve would reach close to $9 billion shortly after receiving $106 million more from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
The Washington-based multilateral donor agency will provide the additional $105 million shortly to bolster the country's foreign exchange reserve in the wake of the global economic recession, the BB officials added.
The IMF has released the first batch of funds worth $630 million recently as part of the special drawing rights (SDR) allocation, which has been made to all 186 IMF members.
"We expect that the foreign exchange reserve would stay at around $9.0 billion even after making payment to the ACU," Deputy Governor of the central bank Ziaul Hassan Siddiqui told AHN in Dhaka on September 1, 2009.
The ACU is an arrangement among the central banks of Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Iran, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka to settle trade related payments on a multilateral basis.
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