The central bank is set to introduce a Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) system on October 8 to facilitate the business activities across the country, officials said.

"We've already directed all the commercial banks to take preparations for implementation of the RTGS as per our timeline," a senior official of the Bangladesh Bank (BB) told the FE Tuesday.

The BB also asked the participating banks to submit their RTGS implementation plans to it by April 23, the official added.

He said India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka have already introduced the RTGS system so that businessmen can quickly provide services for high-value transactions.

Earlier on November 20 last year, the central bank signed a deal with Sweden-based CMA Small Systems AB to introduce the RTGS system.

The RTGS, which can be defined as the continuous (real time) settlement of funds transfers individually on an order by order basis (without netting).

'Real time' means the processing of instructions at the time they are received rather than sometime later. 'Gross Settlement' means the settlement of funds transfer instructions occurs individually (on an instruction by instruction basis).