The high value cheque clearing has doubled and the duration of clearing time has reduced significantly maximising speedy payments as Bangladesh Bank is clearing high value cheques and regular value cheques with an automated cheque processing system, 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 while some cases earlier took 7 to 30 days.

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.

"Currently all regional clearing houses of BB have been brought under one central clearing system and clears items within a day," said Nazneen Sultana, deputy governor of Bangladesh Bank.

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.

Sultana said the automated cheque processing system of BB clears all the intra and inter-regional cheques in a day in regular value session, which used to take 7 to 30 days to clear with the manual system.

"Priority items of entire Dhaka clearing zone are now cleared within the business date under high value session which previously covered a two kilometre area of Motijheel and Dilkusha only for clearing priority items within the same day," said Khandaker Ali Kamran Al Zahid, deputy director of the Department of Currency Management and Payment Systems.

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

"Automated clearing house saves time and cost and also widens the range for exchange of cheque throughout the country," Zahid said.

He said the BB introduced BACH with the financial assistance of British donor agency DFID to modernise the payment system infrastructure.

The BACPS started operations 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.

The Daily Star/Bangladesh/ 15th April 2012