BB raises cash transaction report ceiling to Tk 0.7m

FE Team | Published: September 26, 2007 00:00:00 | Updated: February 01, 2018 00:00:00

FE Report
The Bangladesh Bank (BB) has raised the limit of cash transaction which the banks are required to report to Tk 0.70 million from the existing Tk 0.50 million, effective from this month.
The central bank has relaxed the rules relating to cash transaction report (CTR) to help the commercial banks gear up activities.
The central bank issued a circular in this connection Tuesday and asked the chief executives of all scheduled banks to follow the instruction on submission of the CTR, official sources said.
The CTR for the month of September should be submitted by October 21, 2007 and the report will have to be prepared only on the cash transactions of Tk 0.7 million or above, according to the BB's circular.
"We have relaxed the rules on CTR on the basis of our study," a BB senior official told the FE Tuesday.
"We prefer the use of credit and debit cards to cash transaction to know the actual picture of fund movement through banking system," the official added.
The central bank also asked the commercial banks to continue submitting suspicious transaction reports (STR), besides the CTR as the two reports are completely different.
Under the existing provisions, the banks require to submit the CTRs on both withdrawal and deposit within the third week of the next month.
The information is preserved in a data bank of the Anti-Money Laundering Department of the central bank for cross-checking the mode of fund transfers.
On December 21, 2005, the central bank asked all commercial banks to report if an amount of Tk 0.5 million or above is deposited in or withdrawn from a particular account.
The bankers, however, requested the central bank to increase the limit of the amount for CTR to Tk 1.0 million from the existing Tk 0.5 million to facilitate banking activities and ease pressure of work.
"We want the central bank to re-fix the limit to Tk 1.0 million from the existing Tk 0.5 million to help ease our work load," a senior official of a commercial bank told the FE.