Pvt bank staff come under travel ban

Now employees of the private banks also come under the Bangladesh Bank’s overseas travel ban as the regulator widened its restrictions to safeguard foreign currency reserves.

The central bank issued a notice on Sunday saying that the employees and officials of banks will be barred from travelling abroad to participate in training, meetings, seminars, workshops, study tours, and also personal trips until further notice.

The notice, however, did not mention anything about foreign tours on medical grounds.

The use of foreign currency has increased owing to travelling abroad to participate in the purposes mentioned above, added the BB notice.

The BB said that the global economy has become unstable owing to the war abroad and the economic recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic.

As a result, the imports of the non-essential including luxury goods have been restricted to maintain a stable foreign exchange reserve, as per the BB notice.

Before this move, the BB on May 18 said its officials and employees will not be able to make any kind of foreign trips except for some emergency purposes.

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.