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Commercial banks' foreign-exchange (forex) holdings plummeted to $3.94 billion in September, mainly due to the central bank's growing US dollar-buying interventions, according to officials and money-market experts.
The Bangladesh Bank (BB), the country's central bank, as part of its market intervention strategy, has continued to purchase US dollars from the interbank spot market through auctions to prevent the fall in dollar-taka pricing. This intervention has been reflected in the official data on forex-holding situation of banks, they said.
Official BB data show that the gross foreign exchange held by commercial banks stood at $3.94 billion in September, a decline of over 10 per cent from $4.36 billion in the previous month.
The trend in commercial banks' forex holdings over the past few months was as follows: March ($5.11 billion), April ($4.50 billion), May ($4.98 billion), June ($4.25 billion) and July ($4.27 billion).
On a year-on-year (YoY) basis, the September count of forex holdings in the banks declined by 26 per cent from $4.99 billion recorded a year ago.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, a BB official said the economy started to rebound slowly riding on growing inflow of foreign currencies stemming from record inflow of remittance and export receipts.
The official noted that the central bank, as part of its forex market intervention strategy under the free-floating exchange rate regime, bought more than $2.0 billion since July 13, 2025.
"This could be the major reason behind the fall in forex holdings by the banks," the official said.
Apart from stabilising the exchange rate, the central banker said, this intervention helps banks manage liquidity under the prevailing low investment regime.
According to the BB data, Bangladesh Bank has so far purchased $2.13 billion since July 13 last and has also injected more than Tk 259 billion into the banking system, easing liquidity pressures and enabling commercial banks to meet local currency obligations, according to central bank sources.
Commenting on the decline in banks' gross foreign currency holdings, Dr. Md. Touhidul Alam Khan, Managing Director and CEO of NRBC bank said, "Since imports have decreased, Commercial banks are holding huge US dollars. So, Bangladesh Bank purchases dollars from banks to stabilise the exchange rate and forex market."
"To control exchange rate for wage-earner remittance and to prevent a sharp decline, the central bank limits banks' open USD positions or ask them to surrender excess foreign currency," he added.
Preferring anonymity, a treasury head of a private commercial bank said that apart from forex-buying by the regulator, import orders have started picking up, which is also contributing to the fall in banks' forex holdings.
As a matter of fact, the NOP (net open position) continues dropping in recent months, according to the experienced banker.
According to the statistics available with the Bangladesh Bank (BB), the opening of fresh LCs, generally known as import orders, increased by over 13 per cent to US$6.22 billion in September from the August count of $5.38 billion.
The value of import orders was $6.03 billion in July and $4.14 billion in June of this year, the central bank data showed.
The data also showed that the NOP in banks dropped to around $800 million now from over $1.20 billion recorded three months ago.
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