The central bank has imposed service charge on clearing automated cheque for the first time to afford the operational and maintenance costs of automated cheque processing system launched two-year back. The service charge will be effective from January next year and will remain enforce for one year, said a Bangladesh Bank (BB) press release issued on Tuesday.

A bank has to pay VAT (value added tax) worth Tk 25 to the central bank and that the respective bank will
realise Tk 50 from its clients for any high value cheque, the BB said.

In case of regulatory value cheque clearing, bank has to pay Tk 5.0 as VAT and will realise Tk 7.0 from their clients, it said.

And in case of any electronic funds transfer network, bank has to pay Tk 5.0 as VAT and will realise Tk 7.0 from their clients, it added.

The BB introduced Bangladesh Automated Clearing House (BACH) with the financial assistance of British donor agency DFID to modernise the payment system infrastructure.

With its two wings, Bangladesh Automated Cheque Processing System (BACPS) and Bangladesh Electronic Fund Transfer Network, BACH acts as the most sophisticated electronic channel for settling inter bank financial transactions throughout the country.

The BACH has started its operation in October 2010 by replacing the manual cheque clearing system with image and date-based cheque truncation system where Magnetic Ink Character Recognition encoded cheques are exchanged in encrypted form between the participating banks through a secured communication link.

After introducing the system, the high value cheque clearing has doubled and the duration of clearing time has reduced significantly maximising speedy payments, officials said.

Through the automated system, the central bank cleared an average 85,000 regular value cheques and high value cheques worth Tk 4,700 crore in a day.

However, earlier it had taken 7 to 30 days to clear high value cheques.

According to BB, of the total 85,000 cheques, 80,000 are regular value (below Tk 5 lakh) and the remaining 5,000 are high value (worth Tk 5 lakh and above) cheques.

The number of high value cheques rose to 5,000 in the automated system from 2,000 in the manual system, and the number of regular value cheques also increased to 85,000 from 70,000 in the previous system.

News: The Daily Independent/Bangladesh/14-Nov-12

Md Sayedul Hasan, Deputy Managing Director of Dutch-Bangla Bank Limited, inaugurates a branch at Hemayetpur, Savar Tuesday.

Dutch-Bangla Bank Limited (DBBL) has opened its 123rd branch at Hemayetpur, Savar (Pranto Plaza, Hemayetpur Bus Stand) Tuesday.

Like the other DBBL branch network, it would provide on-line banking facilities to the clients from the opening day of the branch.

Md Sayedul Hasan, Deputy Managing Director of the Bank formally inaugurated the Hemayetpur Branch.

DBBL provides a wide array of banking products and financial services including card services to its retail and corporate customers. The Bank started mobile banking operation, first of this kind in the country to reach banking services to the door steps of the millions of rural people.

News: The Daily Sun/Bangladesh/14-Nov-12

Bangladesh Bank will impose charges on transactions of Bangladesh Automated Clearing House (BACH) with effect from January 1 next.

“Such charges (of three categories) will primarily remain effective for one year from January 1,” said a BB circular sent to the Managing Directors and Chief Executives of all the banks.

The central bank will realise Tk 25 plus VAT (value added tax) for high value cheque clearing from the respective bank while Tk 50 plus VAT from clients.

It will also impose Tk 5 plus VAT for regular value cheque clearing and any EFT (electronic fund transfer) transactions.

In that case, the bank will realise Tk 7 plus VAT from the clients.

The BACH has two components - Bangladesh Automated Cheque Processing System (BACPS) and Bangladesh Electronic Funds Transfer Network (BEFTN) -- by which the clients were availing themselves of modern banking facilities.

News: The Daily Sun/Bangladesh/14-Nov-12

Bangladesh Bank (BB) Tuesday released a schedule of charges that the central bank and the requesting banks could realise for clearance of cheques of different values.

For clearance of high-value cheques, the BB would charge Tk 25 and VAT (Value Added Tax) from requesting banks while the banks could charge Tk 50 and VAT from their clients.

For regular value cheques, the rate per cheque is Tk 5 and VAT while banks could charge maximum Tk 7 and VAT from clients.

The rate of charge per transactions under the Bangladesh Electronic Fund Transfer Network in case of the central bank is Tk 5 and VAT while banks could charge Tk 7 maximum from clients.

News: The Daily Sun/Bangladesh/14-Nov-12

The World Bank is now unwilling to finance $160 million in the country’s fisheries sector under Integrated Fisheries Livinghood Project, Bangladesh (IFLHPB), though it earlier showed interest to invest in the project.

The WB informed Fisheries and Livestock Minister Abdul Latif Biswas about its unwillingness during his visit to WB office in Washington last September.

It, however, showed interest to provide technical assistance to local fisheries sector.

A report sent to the cabinet division on fisheries minister’s visit to USA during 20-30 September reads that Scandinavians country Norway was interested to funding that project, fisheries ministry sources said.

The World Bank’s resident representative in Bangladesh Ellen Goldstein in a recent meeting with the fisheries minister at his office also informed that the WB will not finance the project, said a senior official of fisheries ministry.

The official also said that the name of project will be altered as the World Bank has withdrawn itself from funding the project.

The project has been undertaken to educate local fishermen about implementing the rules of international standard in fishing. Under the project, the government will also carry out a survey on fresh water fisheries resources framework.

The project was taken aiming to diversify country’s fisheries sector and boost exports of local fish and shrimp to earn more foreign currency, as per the project proposal.

According to the project, the government will also develop country’s costal aquaculture and increase Mari culture variety of fishes.

The country’s fish sector earned $ 598.42 million during last fiscal marking a negative growth of over 4.0 per cent compared to that of the previous year. But it fell short of target by over 17 per cent.

Shrimp farming is a key employment sector in the country’s south-western coastal region. Some 1.2 million people are directly involved with the industry while 130 shrimp processing plants and tens of thousands of farms have also created indirect employment of 5 million people.

News: The Daily Sun/Bangladesh/14-Nov-12