The commerce ministry would ask Bangladesh Bank to start providing customers with refunds of advance payments that were made to e-commerce firms but got stuck with payment gateways for non-delivery of goods, said a senior official yesterday.

The central bank was supposed to start paying back the Tk 512 crore a lot earlier but that did not come about for delays in vetting by the law ministry.

"However, Bangladesh Bank again sent a letter to the commerce ministry asking whether they will wait for further vetting or not," said AHM Shafiquzzaman, additional secretary to the commerce ministry.

The commerce ministry will send a letter to the central bank next week asking to first start paying those who did not file court cases against the fraudulent e-commerce companies, Shafiquzzaman said.

The law ministry has not responded as of yet to a commerce ministry letter seeking vetting on providing the refund, he said.

Vetting is not required to pay back money over which there is no legal dispute, said Shafiquzzaman, also the chief of a newly formed body, Digital Commerce Cell, which is mainly dealing with all e-commerce and f-commerce issues.

However, the additional secretary could not immediately state the exact amount of money over which there was legal disputes and that over which there was none.

He also could not state the exact date on which the repayments would begin, saying it was hinged on the central bank.

After a meeting of the digital commerce stakeholders at his secretariat office in Dhaka, he said the ministry would launch unique business identification numbers within this month as the application form had already been prepared.

Moreover, different organisations like the e-Commerce Association of Bangladesh have been engaged in preparing the draft of a proposed e-commerce law, as had been decided earlier, he said.

The commerce ministry and Bangladesh Bank have already decided to pay back the Tk 512 crore. The decision was also endorsed in an inter-ministerial meeting last month.

The cabinet division formed a 15-member high powered committee in September to refund the Tk 512 crore.