The Bangladesh Bank (BB) has lifted a ban on bank employees from travelling abroad at their own expense just a day after restricting them from all sorts of foreign trips.
The central bank issued a notice on Monday saying that the employees and officials of banks will be able to travel abroad on medical grounds and to perform Hajj.
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Training, meetings, seminars, workshops, and study tours conducted with full funding from foreign hosting organisations will be exempt from the prohibition, the notice added.
However, foreign nationals will be allowed to visit their home country and officials working in the Bangladesh branch of the foreign bank can go to the head office.
The directive was issued under the powers conferred by Section 45 of the Banking Companies Act, 1991.
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Before this move, the BB on May 23 said bank officials and employees will not be able to make any kind of foreign trips.
In order to ease pressure on foreign exchange reserves, the government on May 11 decided to stop foreign trips of its officials and postponed the implementation of less important projects that require imports.
On May 16, the Finance Division said the employees of autonomous, state-owned, semi-government organisations and state-owned banks and financial institutions cannot go on overseas trips.
Reserves fell to $41.92 billion last week owing to rising imports. It was $46.15 billion on December 31.
