December 13 second installment sanctioned

There is inflationary pressure in the country. Various initiatives have been taken to reduce inflation. Bangladesh Bank has sold dollars from reserves to keep supply of goods normal. But not a single dollar will be invested domestically to ease pressure on reserves. Already, 3.5 billion dollars have been invested from the 7.5 billion Export Development Fund (EDF). New dollars will arrive in the next two months. Besides, the second tranche of the IMF’s 4.7 billion USD loan will be approved on December 13. Bangladesh will get a loan of 681 million US dollars in the second installment. Then the reserve will increase. Besides, Bangladesh Bank has taken various initiatives to stop money laundering and hundi. Already, the amount of remittances is increasing. Therefore there is nothing to worry about the reserves of the country.
Bangladesh Bank Governor Abdur Rauf Talukder said these things in a meeting with the leaders of Economic Reporters Forum (ARF) on Monday. Abdur Rauf Talukder said that the loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) will be available in December next month. The day before that, the loan will be approved in the board meeting of the donor organization. And since the loan agreement is at the staff level, there is no doubt about getting this loan. Regarding inflation, he said, we have nothing to fear. We are currently at the bottom. And there is no way down. We see light at the end of the tunnel. We will rebound in the current financial year. Inflation will be 8 percent in December. Which is set to be 6 and a half percent next June. But there is a syndicate. That is why there is no denying that people are suffering.
Regarding money laundering, Abdur Rauf Talukdar said that at least 10 times more money is smuggled under the cover of business than Hundi. For example, there are 13 thousand Bangladeshi companies in Dubai. These are organizations built for the purpose of trafficking. Similarly, 2500 institutions have been established in Portugal. The source of money is trafficking. Earlier, about one and a half billion dollars was smuggled through invoicing every month. Later the surveillance was increased. But the amount of LC did not decrease. That is why the LC bill has come down to 4-5 billion instead of 8-9 billion. But this did not reduce the supply. LC conditions will be waived if the dollar rises.
The governor said that the IMF board meeting is scheduled to be held on December 13 regarding the second tranche of the IMF’s 4.7 billion USD loan. We hope that the second installment of the loan may be approved in that meeting. Bangladesh will get a loan of 681 million US dollars in the second installment. He also said that we have reached a very good agreement with the IMF. We could not fulfill both their conditions. However, I managed to fill the rest. We have explained the reasons for not fulfilling those two conditions. They are satisfied with our explanation.
At the end of the meeting, the journalists present said that there is currently a dollar crisis in the country. In such a situation, we have advised to issue dollar bonds. Once it is launched, expatriates and foreign investors will be able to invest. This will accelerate the flow of dollars. According to the data, in the first four months (July-October) of the current fiscal year 2023-24, the amount of dollars sold from the reserve has reached four and a half billion dollars. Sales in the same period last fiscal year were over $5 billion. Bangladesh Bank imposed strict restrictions on imports to control the dollar crisis. However, the bank was continuously selling dollars from the reserves as it could not fully control the import of luxury goods.

In this case, journalists suggested to be stricter on the import of luxury goods. They said that in order to overcome the dollar crisis, the import of luxury goods must be strictly imposed. So we told the Governor of Bangladesh Bank about this. At the end of the meeting, Refait Ulyah Mridha said, the monetary policy-dollar price etc. was discussed in the meeting. We also discussed how to stabilize our economy. Governor said, very soon our economy will stabilize.