The Association of Bankers, Bangladesh (ABB) and the Bangladesh Foreign Exchange Dealers Association (BAFEDA) at a meeting on Thursday decided on the same dollar exchange rate for remittances and export proceeds at Tk 109.50.
Before this meeting, as per the rules, banks charged Tk 109 per dollar for remittances and Tk 108.50 for export proceeds.
Moreover, from Sunday, banks will charge Tk 110 per dollar for imports and sell dollars to customers at Tk 110, in line with the decisions of Thursday’s meeting.
The new unified rate will come into effect from Sunday. ABB and BAFEDA have instructed all banks to follow the fixed rates.
Md Afzal Karim, chairman of BAFEDA and CEO and managing director of Sonali Bank, confirmed the development to The Business Post after the meeting.
“We’ve instructed all the banks to follow the rules and not charge more than the fixed rates. Otherwise, the central bank will take action against them,” he stressed.
On July 31, ABB and BAFEDA decided to raise the dollar rates for remittance and export proceeds by Tk 0.50 to Tk 109 per dollar, and by Tk 1 to Tk 108.50, respectively.
Banks are facing difficulties in settling imports due to the ongoing dollar crisis in the country, which started last year after the dollar market suddenly became volatile.
Last year, the dollar rate even soared to record Tk 122 at the Kerb market. The situation became so bad that banks were unable to open letters of credit (LCs) as required by businesses.
To bring the situation under control, Bangladesh Bank (BB) decided that ABB and BAFEDA would fix the different dollar rates every month. The two organisations have followed through since September 2022.
However, several banks are yet to follow the rates ABB and BAFEDA have been fixing in line with the BB directive. The central bank’s investigations have also found that some banks charge even more for remittances.
The central bank sold more than $14 billion to commercial banks in FY2022-23 for opening LCs.
