The country’s foreign exchange reserves further shrank by $88 million or 0.5 per cent during the week that ended on March 2, the central bank reported on Thursday. During the week in review, the country’s dollar holding depleted to $16.336 million from $16.424 billion of the previous week ending on February 24. The State Bank held $11.897 billion, down $165 million or 1.3 per cent compared to $12.062 billion that the bank possessed in the preceding week. The commercial banks, however, did an upset by m intaining dollar reserves worth $4.438 billion. This depicts an increase of 1.7 per cent or $76 million when compared with $4.362 billion that the banks held last week.
Country’s dollar reserves, after hitting the record $18.31 billion mark in July 2011, are constantly contracting, due to what the central bank believes repayment of foreign loans. The State Bank repaid at least $399 million to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) at the end of last month (February) with economic managers reportedly having said the repayment of $1.1 billion IMF repayments by June 2012 were already budgeted, thus would have no impact on the fragile economy.
