The Bangladesh Bank is waiting for the interim government to bring a Payment and Settlement System Act, 2024 into effect, as it intends to take legal action against mobile financial service (MFS) provider Nagad Ltd over alleged irregularities.
After a five-month pause, dollar rates have started to rise, prompting the central bank to question the managing directors of 13 banks about the fresh volatility of the greenback.
BB issued letters on Dec 19 and the deadline for explanation ends today
As much as 89.3 percent of the credit extended by First Security Islami Bank, when controlled by the major Awami League beneficiary S Alam Group, to AL-affiliated Sikder Group by violating banking rules and regulations has become defaulted.
Problem-ridden Padma Bank has applied to the Bangladesh Bank for Tk 1,300 crore in liquidity support to mitigate its crisis and strengthen its ability to repay depositors.
Defaulted loans at six private commercial banks nearly tripled in one year till September 2024, according to central bank data, which bankers term “alarming”.
State-run Janata Bank has been partly exempted from the Bank Companies Act-1991 so that it can lend money to Beximco Group, a loan defaulter.
Consumer financing has slowed as people are adopting a go-slow strategy for taking loans, considering the increasing trend of interest rates amid ongoing inflationary pressure.
Cash-strapped Islami Bank borrowed Tk 1,000 crore from the state-run Sonali Bank offering interest, in violation of the Bangladesh Bank guidelines for Shariah-based banking.
The Bangladesh Bank is injecting fresh funds into the economy despite adopting a contractionary monetary policy, a contradictory move that may make it harder to tame stubborn inflation.
Both the government and banks are facing a tight liquidity situation, which has pushed up the yield of treasury bills and bonds and the lending rate in the banking sector
BB plans to offer more permissions for digital banks in order to pave the way for full-fledged financial services based on a 100 percent branchless banking system
The Bangladesh Bank yesterday announced an array of measures to bolster its fight against stubbornly high inflation, a major headache for the new government.
The central bank has rolled out a plan to introduce an interim crawling peg system for the taka to regulate abrupt fluctuations of its value, paving the way towards a fully flexible regime in the future.
The peg system would be linked to a carefully selected basket of currencies and operate within a predefined exchange rate corridor
Bangladesh Bank also raised the benchmark policy rate by 25 basis points to 8 percent
To tame inflation, BB is likely to increase the policy rate further
BB's adoption of crawling peg as per IMF prescription will possibly rule out a market-driven exchange rate, as suggested
