The price of the greenback has been rising everyday for the last one month, hitting Tk 71.65 yesterday for import, which is Tk 0.20 higher than Tuesday's rate.

"The pressure on liquidity in the inter-bank foreign exchange market despite surplus in the Current Account originates from payment obligations against past-deferred payment [for] imports of petroleum and capital machinery," reads the Bangladesh Bank (BB) press release.

It then forecast that the pressure on forex market is expected to ease soon, "as current inflows [of foreign currency] are well in excess of new import liabilities that are being incurred."

But, the banking sources have a different view. They do not see any indication of an immediate let-up in the current forex scarcity.

For instance, they pointed out that Janata Bank alone will have to meet $150 million deferred payments in this month for imported petroleum products. The situation is more or less similar for a number of other banks due to obligations to pay up deferred bills for other imports, they added.

The BB release said in the first half of the current fiscal year (FY) the current account balance was $153 million, compared to the negative balance of $85 million in the same period of FY05. The improved balance situation was mainly due to a strong growth in workers' remittances and export, which grew by 14.84 percent and 22.62 percent over the July-December period. The import over the same period registered an increase of 11.97 percent.

Over the six months, imports of capital machinery rose by 36.38 percent, iron and steel by 56.31 percent, fertiliser by 44.85 percent, petroleum, oil and lubricants by 21.09 percent and crude petroleum by 102.28 percent. "Import growth of capital machinery and production inputs thus remain healthy," observed the central bank.