Bangladesh’s central bank is working to raise its foreign-exchange reserves to around $40 billion by the end of the fiscal year in June to stabilize the exchange rate, Governor Ahsan H. Mansur said, Bloomberg reported.
“The market is essentially in equilibrium, and we are now building reserves from a position of strength,” Mansur said in a phone interview on Saturday. The central bank has purchased more than $1 billion in U.S. dollars at auction in recent weeks without destabilizing the local currency. “Our objective is to stabilize the exchange rate, not to fix the price,” he added.
As of September 3, Bangladesh held $31.4 billion in gross reserves, enough to cover about five months of imports under the central bank’s measure, or four months using the IMF’s stricter definition. Mansur said his target is six months of import coverage, which would provide the bank comfort regardless of whether the IMF program continues.
Mansur, a former IMF economist who became Bangladesh Bank’s 13th governor in August 2024, said political clarity following the February 2026 election will help accelerate reforms, including bank consolidation and tighter oversight of non-bank finance firms. “If we can sustain these changes for five to 10 years, the financial system will be much stronger,” he said.
The effort to rebuild reserves follows a year in which Bangladesh cleared nearly $4 billion in arrears to global suppliers and power companies, including India’s Adani Group, restoring trust with correspondent banks. Key factors supporting reserves include rising remittance inflows, as tighter controls reduced the use of informal money-transfer networks, and a decline in import over-invoicing. Exports also rose about 9% over the same period, narrowing the current-account gap.
Speculative pressure last year pushed the taka to 127 per U.S. dollar, but central bank interventions have since stabilized the currency. Mansur said Bangladesh Bank resisted IMF pressure to adopt a fully flexible exchange-rate regime, citing risks of overshooting as seen in Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
