The country's forex reserve was slated to drop further down to $37 billion in the first week of September due to a scheduled routine import payment to the Asian Clearing Union (ACU).
The Bangladesh Bank is scheduled to make a $1.73 billion for payment against imports made during the July-August period of 2022.
This will cause Bangladesh's forex reserves to drop to $37 billion, down from $39.05 billion as of Wednesday.
Official sources made the call, while the central bank continued selling the US dollar at comparatively lower prices to the banks in a bid to cushion the impact.
Different ministries, including power, energy and mineral resources along with agriculture, now prefer to collect the greenback from the central bank through mostly state-owned commercial banks (SoCBs) to settle their import-payment obligations for essentials, including fuel oils, the officials explain.
The central bank is now selling the US currency at Tk95 per unit to the banks as foreign-currency liquidity for footing import-payments bills, particularly for petroleum products, liquefied natural gas (LNG), food- grains and fertilizers.
However, most of the authorized dealer (AD) banks traded the greenback at rates ranging between Tk95.05 and Tk108 to their customers on Wednesday for settling the import-payment obligations, according to market operators.
They also said the banks were fixing the selling rate of the US dollar to the importers in accordance with buying rates of the greenback from exporters as well as inward remittances from the overseas exchange houses.
The banks are charging higher rates of the US dollar to the importers as the overseas exchange houses are quoting increased rates of the inward remittances continuously, they explained.
Most of the banks received the inward remittances offering maximum at Tk114 on Wednesday instead of Tk111 two days before through the overseas exchange houses.
As part of the ongoing moves, the central bank sold $50 million more directly to three SoCBs on Wednesday to help them meet a growing demand for the greenback as global price rises have led to import-cost escalation with its resultant pressures on reserves of Bangladesh, as also of many other countries.
The settlement of letters of credit (LC), generally known as actual import, in terms of value, stood at $6.79 billion in July against $6.80 billion a month before.
It was $6.16 billion in May 2022.
On the other hand, the opening of LCs, generally known as import orders, dropped more than 38% to $4.78 billion in July 2022 from $6.60 billion a month before.
It was $5.43 billion in May 2022.
The central bank has so far injected $2.49 billion from the reserves directly into commercial banks as liquidity support for import payments in the current FY23.
In FY22, the central bank sold $7.62 billion from the reserves to the banks for the same purpose.
