Dhaka, Bangladesh (BBN)- Bangladesh’s financial regulators will set up separate wings for strengthening monitoring and supervision on curbing money laundering and combating financing of terrorism.
The decision was taken at a coordination meeting of the watchdogs -- the Bangladesh Bank (BB), the Bangladesh Securities and Exchange Commission (BSEC), the Office of the Registrar of Joint Stock Companies and Firms and the Insurance Development and Regulatory Authority (IDRA), Micro-credit Regulatory Authority (MRA) and Department of Cooperatives (DoC) -- held at the central bank on Sunday with BB Governor Atiur Rahman in the chair.
Under the decision, the BB will also set up a separate wing aiming to expedite supervision on curbing money laundering and combating financing of terrorism on banks and non-banking financial institutions (NBFIs) and money changers.
The central banker also said the wings will help to implement the existing rules and regulations relating to prevention of money laundering and combating financing of terrorism.
“We expect that the decision will help to curb money laundering and terror financing” a BB senior official told BBN in Dhaka.
The meeting also decided to include the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) as new member of the country’s main regulatory bodies for financial sector to ensure satiability in both financial and money markets by strengthening coordination among them.
“We’ve decided to include the BTRC in the regulatory bodies for strengthening monitoring and supervision on mobile financial services (MFS) across the country,” another BB official said.
More than 17.6 million people have opened accounts so far in availing the mobile financial services which is growing day by day.
The banks are providing MFS to their clients through 4,68,000 agents across the country. The average daily transaction is now about BDT 3.65 billion.
BBN/SSR/AD-15Sept14-11:34 am (BST)