DHAKA: Bangladesh offers asked the Worldwide Monetary Fund (IMF) to start negotiations for a loan, the financial minister told the Prothom Alo paper, while adding the fact that economy was “no way in trouble”.
Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal said he did not specify any amount in a letter he sent to the IMF on Sunday. Two sources along with knowledge of the matter, who have declined to be identified as only the finance minister was authorised to talk to the media, stated the government had not however decided how much money this wanted.
“The IMF was required to start an official negotiation to obtain financial loans for balance associated with payments and spending budget assistance, ” Kamal said in the Prothom Alo report released on Wednesday (Jul 27).
“When and how much mortgage will be available depends on them. As far as our own current macroeconomic circumstance is concerned, we are rarely ever in trouble. ”
Kamal did not react to requests for comment from Reuters.
A senior IMF official told Reuters on Tuesday that Bangladesh had requested it to start speaks on a new mortgage under the global creditor’s Resilience and Sustainability Trust. Such funds are capped on 150 per cent of a country’s quota or, in Bangladesh’s situation, the maximum of US$1 billion.
Bangladesh’s Daily Star paper reported on Wednesday that the country needed US$4. 5 billion from the IMF.
The country’s US$416 billion economy has been one of the fastest-growing in the world for years, but rising energy and food prices because of the Russia-Ukraine war have inflated its import bill and the current account debt.
Bangladesh’s financial mainstay is the export-oriented garments sector, which could suffer if sales fall in the main markets in Europe and the United States because of a slowdown in the global economy. After garments, remittances are the second highest supply of foreign currency for Bangladesh.
The South Asian country’s foreign exchange reserves fell in order to US$39. 67 billion as of Jul twenty – sufficient to get 5. 3 months’ worth of imports – from US$45. 5 billion per year earlier.
The July to Might current account deficit had been US$17. 2 billion dollars, compared with a deficit of US$2. 79 billion in the year-earlier period, as its trade deficit widened and remittances fell.
Sri Lanka and Pakistan are the other two South Asian countries to have sought IMF assistance this year.