The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has enquired about the US$300 billion pending from the export sector.
During a meeting with the commerce ministry at the secretariat on Tuesday, a visiting delegation raised the issue.
The delegation enquired about this at a time when the country’s banks are experiencing a dollar issue and are refusing to open letters of credit (LC) due to the situation.
Commerce Secretary Tapan Kanti Ghosh led the Bangladesh side in the meeting with the IMF delegation (staff consultation mission), while Rahul Anand, the mission chief, led the IMF delegation (staff consultation mission).
According to the letter sent by IMF resident representative Joyendu De to the commerce secretary regarding organising the meeting, the agendas of the meeting were the latest situation of formulating tariff policy, the impact of the deal on trade agreements and tariff rate, digitalisation of customs administration and the technical support needed for implementing these.
Speaking to the newspersons after the meeting, commerce secretary Tapan Kanti Ghosh said, “These issues were not raised in the meeting. The entire discussion was on export-related issues, including the complications in the export process, the pending export earnings of US$300 billion, fixing a specific rate for money-exchange in export and import and ways to expand the export.”
Asked about their response to the IMF’s inquiry about the pending US$ 3 billion from export, the commerce secretary said, “We said it was a matter of a long time. The fact that this money got pending in recent times is not the case at all. It accumulated over the years.”
According to sources in the meeting, the IMF delegation mainly discussed money laundering in the name of export. Money laundering is becoming a big problem for Bangladesh.
Bangladesh Financial Intelligence Unit (BFIU) chief Bangladesh bank, Md Masud, said during the publication of the BFIU Annual Report 2021-22 last November that, “Recovery of laundered money is a tough task and it is not easy to recover dollars once they are laundered.”
According to a report of Washington-based Global Financial Integrity (GFI), a total of US$49.65 billion has been laundered from Bangladesh from 2009 to 2018 in the name of foreign trade, which is 4.25 trillion in BDT.
However, the BFIU thinks that the GFI report is not entirely credible. Bangladesh Bank governor Abdur Rauf Talukder also said at a programme of Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS) that money was being laundered with false announcements in the name of export and import.
The IMF delegation further asked whether the rate of dollar should be the same in both import and export.
Speaking regarding this, secretary Tapan Kanti Ghosh said that the gap in the dollar rates in export and import has lessened. The IMF has been told that the central bank is working on the uniform rate of foreign currency. The central bank is expecting something new by next July.
He said, “We told the IMF delegation about entering new markets, including Australia and Japan, in our effort to maintain the export growth. We also mentioned the growth of export may slow down due to high price hikes in the USA and the European countries.”
