Dhaka, Bangladesh (BBN) – The central bank of Bangladesh fined Janata Bank Limited (JBL) BDT 50,000 on Tuesday for its failure in timely settlement of acceptance bills against imports, officials said.
The Bangladesh Bank (BB), the central bank, has sent a letter to the second largest state-owned commercial bank in this connection.
“The central bank has imposed the fine for the first time on the state-owned commercial bank due to its non-compliance with the rules and regulations relating to settlement of bills of acceptance against imports,” BB deputy governor Nazneen Sultana told BBN in Dhaka.
She also said the BB is now monitoring all kinds of foreign exchange transactions using ‘dashboard’, an electronic system to know the actual position of the transactions instantly.
The dashboard provides summary of export, import, inland back to back letter of credit (LC), inward and outward remittance with categorically separated details.
The central bank earlier warned the commercial banks that it would impose fine on them, if they fail to settle their inland and foreign bills of LCs timely.
Earlier on March 12 last, the BB issued a circular to managing directors and chief executive officers of all banks saying that the country’s banking sector has been facing an image crisis as some banks were not settling their acceptance bills in due time.
The banks concerned are now counting excess interest rate and were not settling the acceptance bills in due time, the circular said.
Against the backdrop, the cost of import is now on an upward trend and it would put an adverse impact on the commodity price, the BB said.
For this reason, such types of delay in settling the acceptance bills hinder the public interest, it said.
The central bank gave the instruction to the banks in accordance with Article 45 of the Bank Companies Act 1991.
The central bank is empowered to impose fine against the banks for their failure in settling the acceptance bills under the Article 109 of the act, according to the BB officials.
BBN/SSR/AD-27May14-11:58 pm (BST)
The BB has taken the measures to improve the country’s image in the global market, a senior central banker explained.
