BB restores interbank cheque clearing system
Bangladesh Bank yesterday restored the interbank cheque clearing system in a major relief for users but a backlog of cheques and the non-operational electronic fund transfer (EFT) platform remain triggering sufferings to clients.
Interbank electronic cheque transaction and fund transfer activities through the Bangladesh Automated Clearing House (BACH) of the central bank were suspended on April 13 as a result of disconnection of an optical fibre cable between two data centres of the BB.
The central bank restored the bond between the centres - one at Motijheel and the other at Mirpur - on the evening of April 13, however the full-fledged procedure of the BACH is yet to be restored.
The BACH, the first-ever electronic clearinghouse in Bangladesh, has two elements - an automated cheque processing system (ACPS) and the EFT.
The ACPS has been restored. The EFT was restarted for some time yesterday, but it collapsed again, a central banker said.
"The EFT may be operable from today. Although we've devote all our efforts to resume the machine, there is a bit of uncertainty to resolve the glitch by today."
Banks submitted 1.46 lakh inter-bank cheques involving around Tk 150,000 crore to the BB.
Syed Mahbubur Rahman, managing director of Mutual Trust Bank, said his bank submitted all pending inter-bank cheques to the central bank.
He expressed a hope that the EFT would go back to normalcy by today, which can only help customers conduct banking activities smoothly.
Emranul Huq, managing director of Dhaka Bank, said that the current problem would be completely solved after the BACH recovers fully.
The managing directors of two banks, however, said that they had been unable to submit all cheques yesterday because of an enormous backlog of the documents, meaning that clients would need to wait to get money.
An accountant of an exclusive firm said that his company have been facing a cash shortage going back few days since it had failed to deposit money to its account using the cheques of its clients.
"Our bank has informed us the machine has resumed, but we've been struggling to manage our fund because of a big backlog of the cheques," he said.
On Thursday, the central bank settled a number of the EFT transactions through its real-time gross settlement (RTGS). It didn't use it yesterday, a banker said.
The central bank assured banks of settling EFT transactions through the RTGS today if the BACH will not restore fully.
Clients of a bank are permitted to send Tk 1 lakh and above to customers of other banks through the RTGS.
However, 95 % of the values, which are settled through the EFT, are below Tk 1 lakh.
The interbank transactions through both digital modes will be the largest with regards to number and volumes.
For example, clients submit around one lakh interbank cheques, amounting to around Tk 12,000 crore, per day.
The ACPS runs on the cheque imaging and truncation technology for electronic presentment and payment of paper-based instruments.
Under the EFT system, around 1.5 lakh transactions are settled by clients every day, amounting to Tk 1,000 crore.
Established in February 2011, the Bangladesh Electronic Fund Transfer Network (BEFTN) was the country's first paperless electronic interbank funds transfer system.
It facilitates both credit and debit transactions as a lead over cheque clearing systems.
The network are designed for credit transfers such as for example payroll, foreign and domestic remittances, social security payments, company dividends, bill payments, corporate payments, government tax payments, and person-to-person payments.
