The Cen­tral Bank said it has im­ple­ment­ed tar­get­ed ini­tia­tives aimed at im­prov­ing the ef­fi­cien­cy, trans­paren­cy and dis­tri­b­u­tion of for­eign ex­change in the lo­cal mar­ket over the past two months.

The fi­nan­cial reg­u­la­tor and banker to the gov­ern­ment made this state­ment on Wednes­day, in re­sponse to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia.

The Cen­tral Bank said the ini­tia­tives al­so ad­dressed the in­creased de­mand for US dol­lars as­so­ci­at­ed with the Ju­ly-Au­gust va­ca­tion pe­ri­od and over­seas ed­u­ca­tion-re­lat­ed pay­ments.

The Bank said from mid-June 2026, on a twice-month­ly ba­sis, it has made a cash in­jec­tion of US$5 mil­lion, which has been al­lo­cat­ed to the com­mer­cial banks.

“In this re­gard, ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$20 mil­lion has been in­ject­ed to date. This was done to al­le­vi­ate com­plaints from cus­tomers re­gard­ing ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty to cash at branch­es of com­mer­cial banks.”

The Cen­tral Bank said it al­so in­tro­duced an ad­di­tion­al un­sched­uled in­ter­ven­tion of US$30 mil­lion in­to the mar­ket on Au­gust 6, to sup­port for­eign ex­change avail­abil­i­ty, sup­ple­ment­ing the Cen­tral Bank’s reg­u­lar twice-month­ly in­ter­ven­tions of US$50 mil­lion to au­tho­rised deal­ers.

The in­sti­tu­tion said, as well, it has rein­tro­duced a for­eign-ex­change shar­ing arrange­ment with au­tho­rised deal­ers to help achieve a more bal­anced dis­tri­b­u­tion of avail­able for­eign ex­change.

“The Cen­tral Bank has col­lab­o­rat­ed close­ly with com­mer­cial banks to op­er­a­tionalise this ini­tia­tive, and im­ple­men­ta­tion has been pro­gress­ing smoothy to date,” said the Bank.

In Oc­to­ber 2015, for­mer min­is­ter of fi­nance, Colm Im­bert, re-es­tab­lished a for­eign ex­change shar­ing arrange­ment, in which pur­chas­es from large for­eign ex­change earn­ers were shared pro­por­tion­al­ly among au­tho­rised com­mer­cial banks based on a fixed for­mu­la.

That for­eign ex­change shar­ing arrange­ment had been scrapped on April 1, 2014, by for­mer gov­er­nor Jwala Ram­bar­ran, who shift­ed the dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tem to­ward an auc­tion frame­work among li­censed deal­ers.

In its re­sponse to this news­pa­per’s ques­tions, the Cen­tral Bank said, “While the sup­ply/de­mand im­bal­ance con­tin­ues and the sit­u­a­tion is not yet cor­rect­ed, the com­mer­cial banks have ad­vised that these mea­sures have re­sult­ed in some im­prove­ments in cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence in re­la­tion to ac­cess to for­eign ex­change.”

The Cen­tral Bank added that along­side the three mea­sures, it con­tin­ues to sup­port the Ex­im­bank fa­cil­i­ties es­tab­lished to sup­ply for­eign ex­change to man­u­fac­tur­ers.

“The Bank re­views its US-dol­lar cash pro­jec­tions on a con­tin­u­al ba­sis in light of chang­ing de­mand and sup­ply con­di­tions and will de­ter­mine the ap­pro­pri­ate time to in­tro­duce pol­i­cy cor­rec­tions based on its fore­casts.

“The Bank is en­cour­aged by the de­vel­op­ments tak­ing place in the oil and gas sec­tor and will con­tin­ue to mon­i­tor, as­sess feed­back and make fur­ther ad­just­ments as nec­es­sary, when ap­pro­pri­ate” the in­sti­tu­tion said.

On Ju­ly 10, Gov­er­nor of the Cen­tral Bank, Lar­ry Howai, along with Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo, Min­is­ter of Plan­ning, Eco­nom­ic Af­fairs and De­vel­op­ment, Kennedy Swarats­ingh and Min­is­ter of En­er­gy, Roodal Mooni­lal, met with key stake­hold­ers in the en­er­gy sec­tor. The par­tic­i­pants at the meet­ing, ac­cord­ing to a Cen­tral Bank news re­lease on the day, ex­pressed sup­port for a se­ries of near-term ini­tia­tives to im­prove for­eign ex­change avail­abil­i­ty and dis­tri­b­u­tion.

“Dis­cus­sions fo­cussed on prac­ti­cal ac­tions to en­hance the ef­fi­cien­cy of forex al­lo­ca­tion and sup­port ef­forts to ease cur­rent mar­ket con­straints,” said the Cen­tral Bank last month.