According to BDL’s latest monetary report, the BOP recorded a cumulative deficit of $1.30B by April 2020, compared to a deficit of $3.30B by April last year. Accordingly, Net foreign Assets (NFAs) of BDL fell by $2.96B but the NFAs of commercial banks added $1.66B over the same period.
Interestingly, on a monthly basis, the BOP deficit stood at $240.6M, as NFAs of BDL fell by $812.4M and that of Commercial banks rose by $571.8M.
For a meaningful analysis, we scrutinize the NFAs of commercial banks which are in fact the difference between banks’ Foreign Assets (FA) and Foreign Liabilities (FL). For the month of April, the decline in FLs can be largely attributed to the $467M reduction in the Non-resident customer deposits. Meanwhile, the FAs rose owing it to the upturn of $286M in the Loans to Non-resident customers which offset the drop in Currency and deposits with other CB by $119M.
Meanwhile, the decline in BDL’s NFAs on a monthly basis is mostly attributed to the continued support of essential goods including medicines and fuel.
Balance of Payments (BoP) by April (in $M)
Source: BDL