Bangladesh's foreign exchange reserve maintained upward trend rising to 3.605 billion U.S. dollars Sunday after hitting record highest last week, on strong remittance and export earnings, local daily The Independent reported Monday.

The official international reserve stood at 3.557 billion dollars on Wednesday last week, according to figures of Bangladesh Bank, the central bank.

"The reserve will again drop by around 300 million dollars next week due to a scheduled bimonthly payment of Asian Clearing Union (ACU)," a senior central bank official was quoted as saying.

He, however, expected the up-trend to continue "due to robust exports and remittances against restrained imports."

The reserve was around 3 billion dollars at the end of fiscal 1994-95 (July 1994-June 1995), but started declining to plunge below 1 billion dollars in 2001. The reserve was hovering just over 3 billion dollars during fiscal 2005-06.

A short-term outlook by a central bank official suggested that the reserve position could be maintained despite continued pressure on petroleum price.

He said the present momentum in exports and remittance would continue during the current fiscal year.

Exports grew about 22 percent against a lower import growth of 11 percent during fiscal 2005-06 while remittance grew at 24 percent.

The central bank official sees the reserve position "nominally encouraging" despite some pressures the country experienced during the last two years, mainly from the increased prices of petroleum products.

Source: Xinhua