BB informally tells banks not to buy dollars above Tk123.82 as import payment pressure grows
In a Nutshell:
- Bangladesh Bank verbally instructed banks to keep interbank and remittance dollar purchases at or below Tk123.82.
- Bankers said remittance dollars are trading around Tk123.90 to Tk123.95, making the cap difficult to maintain.
- Rising import payment demand and lower remittance inflows have increased pressure on the dollar market.
Why it Matters
The issue is credibility and consistency of exchange-rate policy at a sensitive negotiating moment. Bangladesh just completed its previous $4.7 billion IMF programme, whose central condition was moving toward a market-determined exchange rate with limited central bank intervention, and the IMF mission that visited Dhaka this month to begin talks on a new programme will almost certainly flag this informal cap as a repeat of the same behavior.
What We Think
The bigger story is not Tk123.82 itself, but the policy pattern. This is at least the third or fourth reported case in roughly the past year of Bangladesh Bank using verbal instructions instead of published circulars to influence the exchange rate, suggesting intervention continues despite the shift to a reference rate framework. That inconsistency could become a key issue in talks on a new IMF program. It is also worth reading alongside the interim government's broader effort to project institutional credibility ahead of the 2026 referendum. That effort put greater focus on how independent and consistent Bangladesh Bank appears, factors that shaped how foreign investors and multilateral lenders assessed Bangladesh's economic governance.
