Bangladesh Forex Reserves Slip to $36.38 Billion After Early September Peak, Remittances Keep Buffer Strong

Bangladesh's foreign currency reserves have eased slightly after touching a fresh high earlier this month, with Bangladesh Bank data showing gross reserves at 36.38 billion dollars as of September 7, down from the 37.41 billion dollars recorded on September 1. The dip is modest against the scale of the buffer built up over the past year, and officials and economists tracking the numbers say it reflects normal month end import settlement rather than any underlying weakness.

More importantly for the country's external stability, reserves calculated under the International Monetary Fund's BPM6 methodology, which strips out committed and encumbered funds to show what is genuinely usable, stood at 31.47 billion dollars. That figure gives Bangladesh roughly 4.8 months of import cover, well above the three month threshold the IMF treats as a minimum comfort level for a country of Bangladesh's size and trade exposure.

A summer of steady accumulation

The September pullback sits at the tail end of a two month climb that took reserves from just above 36.5 billion dollars in early July to the September 1 peak of 37.41 billion dollars. Bangladesh Bank's weekly disclosures over that stretch show a buffer that moved in a fairly narrow band, dipping and recovering by a few hundred million dollars at a time rather than swinging wildly, which economists generally read as a sign of a more settled foreign exchange market than the sharp depletions the country saw in 2022 and 2023.

Date	Gross reserves (US$ billion)	BPM6 usable reserves (US$ billion)
July 7, 2026	36.52	Not disclosed
July 16, 2026	36.66	31.97
August 2, 2026	36.47	31.65
September 1, 2026	37.41	32.50
September 7, 2026	36.38	31.47

Two forces explain most of the recent buildup: remittances sent home by Bangladeshi workers abroad, and export receipts flowing back through the banking channel. Both have been running well ahead of last year's pace. Bangladesh Bank figures show remittances hit 637 million dollars in just the first six working days of September, a 23.4 percent jump over the same period last year, and included a single day record of 201 million dollars on September 6 alone. Total remittance inflow for the July to September stretch of the current fiscal year has reached 6.462 billion dollars, up 19.3 percent year on year, a pace that, if sustained, would put the country on track for one of its strongest remittance years on record.

What is pulling reserves the other way

Working against that inflow is a heavier import bill, particularly for fuel. Petroleum imports alone jumped 83.3 percent to 1.37 billion dollars in July, according to the central bank's trade data, as global oil prices firmed and a domestic gas shortfall forced power and industrial users to lean more heavily on imported liquid fuel and LNG cargoes. That widened the overall trade deficit by more than a third in July and is one reason the reserve line, while still elevated, is not marching upward in a straight line. Debt servicing on the government's external loans, much of it tied to major infrastructure projects financed over the past decade, adds a further steady drag that shows up most clearly around quarterly and half year payment dates.

Economists who follow the reserve numbers closely tend to frame the current level less as a story of crisis and more as a story of headroom. A gross reserve figure hovering between 36 and 37.5 billion dollars, with usable BPM6 reserves consistently above 31 billion dollars, gives the central bank meaningful room to smooth out currency volatility without resorting to the emergency measures, including multiple currency devaluations and import restrictions, that defined the 2022 to 2023 period. That headroom matters heading into a stretch when election related spending, a possible new public sector pay scale, and continued energy import needs could all put fresh pressure on the external account.

The bigger picture

Bangladesh's reserves bottomed out below 20 billion dollars under the IMF's stricter accounting method during the worst of the 2023 currency crunch, before a combination of a more flexible exchange rate regime, tighter import controls, and steadier remittance channels helped rebuild the cushion. The climb back above 30 billion dollars under BPM6 earlier this year was treated as a milestone by policymakers, and the fact that the figure has now held above that level for several consecutive weeks, even through a dip like the one recorded on September 7, suggests the recovery has more staying power than earlier rebounds that proved short lived.

For now, the reserve trajectory leaves Bangladesh Bank with a genuine cushion rather than a wafer thin margin, though bankers caution the number bears watching closely through the rest of the fiscal year as fuel import costs, debt repayments, and the run up to national elections all compete for foreign currency at the same time remittances and exports are being asked to keep funding the gap.