| Local exporters have been offered a unique opportunity of saving around 10 per cent interest on borrowing foreign currency, thanks to a healthy foreign exchange reserve that crossed US$ 10 billion-mark on Wednesday.
Three big enterprises have so far availed themselves of the facility Bangladesh Bank has extended, taking the advantage of the rising trend of reserves for sometime now, to help exporters become competitive in the international market, a senior Bangladesh Bank official told The Independent.
He said Pran Group, Apex Group and Biman Bangladesh Airlines have been the pioneers in borrowing foreign currency at an interest as low as 3.5 per cent, as compared with a maximum lending rate of 13 per cent under a central bank cap imposed on the commercial banks.
It would help the Pran Group to save interest amounting to Tk 7-8 crore from what they would have to pay if the money borrowed in terms of local currency at an interest of 13 per cent.
Bangladesh Bank recently relaxed rules for Offshore Banking Units (OBUs) of local commercial banks to get foreign currency from the central bank and to allow local exporters to borrow foreign currency at lower rates.
Earlier, the OBUs could only provide loans to foreign investors like those in the export processing zones (EPZs) from fund also mobilised from the foreign sources.
"The recent upward trend of foreign exchange reserves has made it possible for the central bank to offer local exporters the low cost foreign currency loan," said another official of Bangladesh Bank.
Bangladesh Bank Governor Dr Atiur Rahman had announced that the central bank would make some arrangement to invest from the comfortable reserve position so that it could contribute to the economic development, as the central bank cannot directly invest into the market.
"We're investing from the reserves into the market, but indirectly, through the commercial banks," deputy governor Ziaul Hassan Siddiqui said, adding that this had given the commercial banks some extra confidence to lend foreign currency.
He said the central bank was also considering raising the export retention quota for the exporters and to increase the export development fund (EDF) so the exporters could get some more low-cost funds.
The deputy governor said the apparel sector was getting huge export orders in the recent days, after signs of a turnaround from the global economic recession, which at one stage would occupy the existing production capacity and prompt the entrepreneurs to increase their capacity.
"At some point of time, we'll have to import capital machinery. There'll be no fund constraints to finance the imports," he said. |