Banks call for more dollars from BB

Banks yesterday urged the central bank to inject more greenbacks into the market to address the shortage of the currency, brought on by higher import bills than export receipts in the past two years.

They also urged the Bangladesh Bank to allow them to make flexible the bill for collection selling rate, which is the rate at which banks make import payments, as the current rate is not commercially viable for them.

The demands were placed by the Association of Bankers, Bangladesh, a forum of managing directors of all private banks, in a meeting with the central bank high-ups at the BB headquarters in the city, said Syed Mahbubur Rahman, its chairman.

The inter-bank rate and the BC selling rate have recently reached the same level, meaning banks are accruing huge losses. For instance, yesterday, the inter-bank exchange rate and the BC selling rate of the US dollar were both Tk 83.70.

The market usually determines the BC selling rate in line with the market economy, but the central bank has informally been putting a cap on the rate of the US dollar for long to control the volatility in the foreign exchange market.

The BB put a cap on the BC selling of the US dollar at inter-bank exchange rate plus Tk 2 on April 26 last year.

In November last year, the banks decided not to sell US dollar at rates higher than Tk 83 following the central bank's request. The BC selling rate later increased to Tk 83.70 and has remained the same.

The inter-bank exchange rate of the US dollar has also been maintaining an upward trend in the recent months. Yesterday it stood at Tk 83.70, up from Tk 80.57 a year earlier, according to data from the central bank.

The BB is now supplying the US dollar but it was not sufficient given the large volume of import payments, said Rahman, also the managing director of Dhaka Bank. Exports have been maintaining a single-digit growth and imports double-digit growth and in the process have created a dollar shortage in the market, the ABB chairman added.

In the first nine months of the fiscal year, imports soared 24.25 percent year-on-year to $40.30 billion, while export earnings grew 6.98 percent to $27.09 billion.

Between July 1 last year and May 30 this year, the BB sold $2.21 billion to banks. In contrast, it sold $175 million and purchased $1.93 billion during the course of fiscal 2016-17.

The higher import payments and lower export earnings in the first nine months of the fiscal year also pushed the current account deficit to an all-time high of $7.08 billion.

BB Governor Fazle Kabir presided over the meeting that was attended by City Bank Managing Director Sohail RK Hussain and Eastern Bank MD Ali Reza Iftekhar.