Staff Correspondent
Inter-bank cheque settlement resumes, but electronic fund transfer in banks remain halted
Electronic fund transfers (EFT) for banks remain halted as Bangladesh Bank’s IT infrastructure is still being repaired.
However, inter-bank cheque settlement resumed from Sunday.
Both were suspended from last Tuesday due to a technical fault in the optical fiber cable between the data centre at the central bank’s Motijheel office and its data centre at Mirpur in the capital.
Customers faced various difficulties in the last few days amid the countrywide lockdown, as banks were not able to continue the inter-bank transaction services. Inter-bank cheque settlement resumed from yesterday but settling transactions through electronic fund transfer (EFT) is still disabled, said Sohail RK Hussain, managing director of Meghna Bank.
“We hope the problem will be solved as soon as possible,” he also said.
A huge number of cheques which were submitted by clients on April 13 have been unsettled for four to five days, said Meghna Bank MD.
Muhammad Zakir Hasan, executive director of Bangladesh Bank’s ICT infrastructure maintenance and management department, told that Bangladesh Automated Clearing House (BATCH) for clearing cheques resumed from Sunday morning, but Bangladesh Electronic Funds Transfer Network (BEFTN) resumed in a limited scale as the disconnection in the optical fiber cable was yet to be fixed.
Engineers of the central bank tried their best to restore the system since Tuesday and most of the services already resumed, said Hasan.
BEFTN was the country’s first paperless electronic inter-bank funds transfer system, which began in February 2011. It facilitates both credit and debit transactions, as a lead over cheque clearing system.
Now only seven departments of Bangladesh Bank, including the payment system department, ICT infrastructure maintenance and management department, common services department and forex reserve and treasury management department are open amid the countrywide lockdown as banks remain open on a limited scale amid the lockdown.
Banking transactions hours have been set from 10am to 1pm and banks will remain open until 2:30pm except on weekly and government holidays.
