Bangladesh Bank staff led by governor Atiur Rahman stand in silence for three minutes starting from 4:00pm to express solidarity with Shahbagh protests demanding death penalty to Jamaat-e-Islami leader Abdul Quader Molla and all other war criminals at the central bank headquarters in Dhaka on Tuesday. 

Bangladesh Bank on Tuesday introduced an electronic system for monitoring all kind of transactions involving foreign exchange in the banking sector to check any embezzlement.
BB governor Atiur Rahman inaugurated the electronic system named dashboard at the central bank headquarters in the capital.
Managing directors of a number of scheduled banks attended the programme.
Atiur said from now on the inspection team of the central bank would be able to analyse the data of the dashboard before it made any special visit to a bank.
‘The introduction of the dashboard is a time-befitting measure. It will help us to tackle embezzlement and forgery in the banking sector,’ he said.
He said that the central bank would know all information about export, import, inward and outward remittance instantly from the dashboard.
The monitoring and supervision system of the BB will be strengthened by using the dashboard, he said.
The zonal offices of the central bank will also be able to use the dashboard and officials concerned will get facility from the electronic system before making any inspection to any bank in their respective zone.
‘The BB has set a target of transmitting all reports in the banking sector through online. The newly-introduced dashboard will give a push to the effort,’ he said.
Moreover, scheduled banks will also be able to supervise their own operation under the system as banks will be able to monitor the business situation at their branches through the BB web portal, the BB governor said.
A BB official told New Age that the electronic screens would initially be set up at the offices of BB governor and concerned deputy governor, executive director, general manager and all branch offices of the central bank.
He said, ‘From now on, we are able to know the bank-wise outstanding inland documentary bills and the amount of bills of acceptance to be given by a branch of a bank in a day,’ he said.
Sonali Bank MD and CEO Pradip Kumar Dutta said that not only the central bank but also his bank could get dashboard facilities.
He said, ‘Sonali Bank could have avoided the recent unexpected incident if the electronic system was introduced before it happened.’
A BB investigation revealed that Sonali Bank’s Ruposhi Bangla Hotel branch lent Tk 3,606 crore to Hallmark Group and five other companies between 2010 and May 2012 against fake letters of credit.
The BB official said that the dashboard would make the central bank capable of tackling embezzlements like Hallmark Group-Sonali Bank scam.
He said that the scam had been done through purchasing fake inland documentary bills for back-to-back LC.
BB deputy governor Nazneen Sultana and executive director Md Ahsan Ullah, NCC Bank MD and CEO Mohammed Nurul Amin, Pubali Bank MD and CEO Helal Ahmed Chowdhury and Islami Bank MD and CEO Mohammad Abdul Mannan also addressed the programme.

A new chapter has opened for the supervision of international transactions as the central bank yesterday launched a full-fledged automated system to monitor the country's entire foreign exchange operations.

Bangladesh Bank has built an integrated database, linking all scheduled banks, to receive updated data online on all transactions related to exports, imports and remittances.

The system will help the banking regulator get updated on all letters of credit, back-to-back LCs, inland bill purchases, export receipts, and inward and outward remittances.

“We want to promote paperless banking across the country. The initiative will help us reach the goal,” BB Governor Atiur Rahman said at the launching ceremony at the central bank headquarters in the capital.

He said the digitised system will strengthen on-site and off-site supervision as it has an "electronic dashboard" to analyse data instantly.

The dashboard is a graphical presentation of foreign exchange data and it has four reporting modules such as export, import, inward remittance and outward remittance, said Nazneen Sultana, a deputy governor of the BB.

“We will now get updated on the branch-wise data,” she said.

The governor said the software developed by their own IT officials will also strengthen the monitoring and supervision system of all scheduled banks who will get access to the dashboard without paying any fee.

“It is a CSR (corporate social responsibility) initiative and we have provided passwords to each chief executive of banks.”

So, the chief executives of the banks will now be able to monitor the foreign exchange transactions of all their branches from their head offices, he said.

The system will eliminate manual compilation of periodical transaction data supplied by the commercial banks, said Md Ahsan Ullah, an executive director of the BB. The association of the chief executives of commercial banks hailed the regulator for launching the system.

BB had been lagging behind the commercial banks in various aspects of automation around five-seven years back, said Mohammed Nurul Amin, chairman of the association. “But now the central bank is a pioneer and trend-setter in many cases of digitisation,” said Amin, also the managing director of NCC Bank.

He also urged the central bank to arrange special trainings for the bank officials to help them run the system smoothly. The BB introduced the online export monitoring system in November 2011, while the other three modules for import, inward and outward remittances started functioning from the beginning of this year on a trial basis.

Bangladesh Bank Tuesday introduced Electronic Dash Board (EDB) to monitor all transactions of foreign currencies by banks.

EDB monitoring will be on daily basis to check any irregularity related to foreign currencies.

In this system, officials in the central bank and chief executives of all banks will be able to see the indicators regarding export proceeds, imports status (LC opening and acceptance on inland bills) and inward and outward remittances.

Bangladesh Bank Governor Dr Atiur Rahman formally launched the EDB at Jahangir Alam Memorial Hall of the central bank.

“All reporting systems will gradually be online under the mega plan of paperless banking system in the country,” Dr Atiur Rahman said.

He added that online reporting would help both the central bank and banks to perform their services faster, ultimately leading the banking sector to behave prudently.

“The central bank’s objective is to keep the country’s financial system safe and secure from irregularities,” the governor said. Deputy Governor Najneen Sultana presented the features of EDB.

“All branches of central bank across the country will be able to monitor indicators of banks in foreign currency transactions any time,” she said.

Najneen Sultana added that the authorised dealer banks have been asked to upload all fresh data on foreign currency transactions to ensure proper supervision.

BB Executive Director Md Ahsanullah said the new system will prevent incidence like Hall-Mark scam.

Alhaj Mohammad Hasan, Chairman of the EC of the bank, presides over a meeting at the bank's head office in Dhaka recently.

The 519th meeting of the Executive Committee (EC) of Shahjalal Islami Bank Limited (SJIBL) was held at the bank's head office in Dhaka recently.

Alhaj Mohammad Hasan, Chairman of the EC of the bank, presided over the meeting, said a press release.

Alhaj Anwer Hossain Khan, Chairman of the board, Sajjatuz Jumma, Akkas Uddin Mollah, and Md Setaur Rahman, Deputy Managing Directors of the bank, attended the meeting.